—streets, gutters, and alleyways aswarm with indigenous vermin such as Bapho-Rats, Caco-Roaches, Brick-Mites, and Corpusculars, all hunting for the unsuspecting to infect, to ensile with larva, or to eat—
—shapely She-Demons—some brown, some black, some spotted—chatting inanely behind a salon window as trained Trolls paint their horns and administer pedicures with their teeth—
—sewer grates belching flame, while beneath the iron grills faces strain, screaming, charred fingers wriggling in the gaps. Over some grates more Broodren roast severed feet on sticks—
—hot-air balloons floating in and out of soot-colored clouds overhead, each suspending iron-bolted baskets from which dog-faced Conscripts dump buckets of infectious waste, molten gold, or Gargoylic Acid onto the masses below. The skin of the warped balloons reads SATANIC NOBLE GAS FLEET—
—more storefront windows passing by. LIVE SEX WITH THE DEAD SHOW! LIVE PULPING SHOW! LIVE EYE-SUCKING SHOW! LIVE HALVING SHOW! When you peer into this latter window, you glimpse destitute Demons and half-breeds being drawn slowly across tables fitted with band saws, while spectators applaud from rows of theaterlike chairs—
—and Broodren, Broodren, and more Broodren—the hooligans of the Abyss—shifting stealthily through the throng with eyes bright and fangs sharp, absconding with whatever they can tear away from passersby: purses, wallets, skin, pudenda. One Broodren runs off with half of a Troll’s face, only to be palmed flat into the sidewalk by a vigilant Golem—
—and a final dizzying scan of the noxious city’s skyline: a sea of smoke, sinking rooftops, and screams; endless rot-encrusted buildings atilt; mile after mile of crackling power lines dipping from rusted towers decorated by corpses hanging from gibbets; evil winged things gliding through the mephitic air, forever and ever—
—and ever and ever . . .
. . . and then the “snatches” end.
“Of course, acclimation takes a while,” Howard mentions. “But you’ll scarcely take in anything with your eyes closed most of the time.”
You’re too afraid to take in another glimpse; it’s all too tumultuous because you know that every impossibility here is utterly real. You open your eyes, then, to slits, careful . . .
“Here’s something you’ll find interesting . . .” Howard approaches a business establishment with a saloon-style swing-door as an entrance. The sign reads: LOODY’S MAM-MIFERON TAPROOM.
“Taproom!” you exclaim. “Beer?”
“Regrettably not, Mr. Hudson. Kegs of lager aren’t on the offering, just kegs—so to speak—of milk.”
“Milk?”
“Mammiferons . . .”
You enter the narrow bar. Various Demons and Humans sit about slate tables sipping from crude metal cups.
Howard points to the craggy brick wall behind the bar top. There is, indeed, a row of “taps” as one would expect in a beer hall but . . .
Are those . . . BREASTS? you ask yourself.
“Mammiferons,” Howard repeats. “They’re Hexegenically manufactured; particularized genes are spliced and then enspelled, for the desired result.”
All you can do is stare.
Six carriages of flesh hang along the wall, each sporting two bulbous breasts as large as basketballs. Veins pulse beneath the stretched, translucent skin. At first you think they must be torsos of preposterously endowed Human women but then you recall what Howard said about their “manufacture.” Betwixt each pair of breasts there seems to be an organic “chute” of some sort, and each rimmed chute yawns open as if in wait of something.
“It’s a wall of boobs!” you have no choice but to yell.
“The Mammiferons exist to produce milk in these more upscale taprooms.”
The metal gird that surrounds each enormous nipple reminds you of the connector on a car battery, and affixed to the top of each gird is a tap.
You watch as a shockingly attractive werewolf yanks down on a tap and fills a cup for a demonic customer.
“The barkeeps are Lycanymphs,” Howard elucidates. “Erotopathic female werewolves, oh, and look.” He points to one of the organic chutes between one of the pairs . . .
The bar’s janitor—some manner of ridge-browed Troll—lackadaisically drops a shovelful of sloppy refuse into the chute. The chute closes, pauses, then gulps.
“They’re brainless,” Howard goes on. “You can think of Mammiferons as living beverage dispensers. Miss?” he asks of the furred attendant. “A cup of the vintage, if you will.”
The voluptuous She-Wolf holds a metal cup beneath one of the massive teats, works the tap, and fills it up with slimy off-white milk.
“All we need do is feed them garbage and they produce milk for eons . . .” Howard smiles at the cup. “I must have some sustenance, lest exhaustion supervene the necessary ambling to come.” Howard drinks the cup of dense milk. “Such a treat!”
Yet all you can do is gawp at the row of preposterous, sodden breasts on the wall.
Hell really is a screwed-up place . . .
The feisty werewolf pours more drafts from the papillic taps.
“Howard?” you ask. “Can we get out of here? This is too much for me.”
“As you wish.” Howard takes you back out to the hectic street, and turns. “This is the ‘artsy’ District, though the insinuation, like all else in Hell, is quite false. It’s all petulantly commercial, I’m afraid.”
You pass some sort of café that reminds you of Starbucks, but the cups of coffee look more like cups of mud. Trendy Hellborns yak pretentiously, batting their eyes. When you pass what appears to be a bookstore, Howard exclaims, “Drat!” and then you spot the window sign that announces BOOK SIGNING TONIGHT! EDGAR ALLAN POE WILL AUTOGRAPH YOUR COPY OF HIS LATEST RELEASE, THE RISE OF THE HOUSE OF USHER!
“I can’t abide to miss a signing,” Howard laments. “But duty does indeed call.”
Marquees of lights blink around the next corner, and suddenly your inhuman ears pick up a punchy beat behind a low, crooning voice that sings, “Hardheaded shovel, stone-cold ground, six feet under’s where I’ll be found, so don’t you, step on my blue-suede shroud . . .”
“Hey, that voice is very familiar!” you insist and when your head-stick passes the little honky-tonk’s front door, you glimpse a flaming stage before a packed house. On the stage itself a man in a pompous white suit fringed with silver locomotes about, jerking his pelvis. He’s got heavy black sideburns and horns in his head.
No! you think. It can’t be!
Or . . . can it?
“Six for the money, six for the show, six for Lord Lucifer—go, cat, go!”
No!
“I’m not attuned to that particular genre of music,” Howard says, “though the singer seems to be very popular here. However, Mozart plays with regularity, and so does Paganini. In fact, the former’s latest opera, Gloria de Satonus is marvelous.” But then Howard seems to catch himself in an oversight. “Oh, I suspect we’ll be rephasing soon; I haven’t been counting—”
“Counting what?”
“My steps. The Turnstile is programmed to rephase our location every 666 steps—”
“I never would’ve guessed,” you groan.
“Don’t scoff, Mr. Hudson. The Imperfect Number is quite a powerful force of Nether-Energy. As God proclaimed seven to be the perfect number, he unwittingly empowered the imperfection of one digit lower. Lucifer embraces it. In fact, when God cast his Once Favorite off the Twelfth Gate of Heaven, Lucifer, the Morning Star, plummeted in the configuration of the number six. Through that number, in one manner or other, all occult science is activated—the Senarial Science. You’re about to behold more examples.”