Damned

V

Who could imagine that cross-cultural anthropological theology could be so absolutely fascinating! According to Leonard, who really does have the loveliest brown eyes, all the demons of Hell formerly reigned as gods in previous cultures.

No, it's not fair, but one man's god is another man's devil. As each subsequent civilization became a dominant power, among its first acts was to depose and demonize whoever the previous culture had worshiped. The Jews attacked Belial, the god of the Babylonians. The Christians banished Pan and Loki and Mars, the respective deities of the ancient Greeks and Celts and Romans. The Anglican British banned belief in the Australian aboriginal spirits known as the Mimi. Satan is depicted with cloven hooves because Pan had them, and he carries a pitchfork based on the trident carried by Neptune. As each deity was deposed, it was relegated to Hell. For gods so long accustomed to receiving tribute and loving attention, of course this status shift put them into a foul mood.

And, ye gods, I knew the word relegated before it came out of Leonard's mouth. I might be thirteen and a newbie to the underworld, but don't take me for an idiot.

"Our friend Ahriman was originally cast out of the pantheon by the pre-Zoroastrian Iranians," Leonard says, shaking his index finger in my direction and adding, "but don't be tempted to perceive Essenism as a Judaic avatar of Mazdaism."

Shaking his head, Leonard says, "Nothing related to Nebuchadnezzar the Second and Cyaxares is ever that simple."

Babette gazes at the compact she holds open in one hand, retouching her eye shadow with a little brush. Looking up from her reflection in the tiny mirror, Babette calls to Leonard, "Could you possibly BE more boring?"

Among the early Catholics, he says, the Church found l hat monotheism couldn't replace the long-beloved polytheism now outdated and considered pagan. Celebrants were too used to petitioning individual deities, so the Church created the various saints, each a counterpart to an earlier deity, representing love, success, recovery from illness, etc. As battles raged and kingdoms rose and fell the god Aryaman was replaced by Sraosha. Mithra supplanted Vishnu. Zoroaster made Mithra obsolete, and with each succeeding god, the prior ruling deity was cast into obscurity and contempt.

"Even the word demon," Leonard says, "originates with Christian theologians who misinterpreted 'daimon' in the writings of Socrates. Originally the word meant 'muse' or 'inspiration,' but its most common definition was 'god.'" He adds that if civilization lasts long enough into the future, one day even Jesus will be skulking around Hades, banished and ticked off.

"Bullshit!" a man yells. The yelling erupts from the jail cell of the football man, where his bare bones foam with red corpuscles, the red bubbles running together to form muscles which swell and stretch to attach with their tendons, the white ligaments braiding, a process both compelling and revolting to watch. Even before a layer of skin has fully enveloped the skull, the mandible drops open to shout, "That's bullshit, geek!" The flow of new skin breaks like a pink wave to form lips around the teeth, the lips saying, "You just keep talking that way, twerp! That's exactly why you're stuck here."

Without looking up from her own reflection in her compact mirror, Babette asks, "What are you down here for?"

"Offsides," the football man calls back.

Leonard shouts, "Why am I here?"

I ask, "What's 'offsides'?"

Auburn hair sprouts from the football man's scalp. Curly, coppery hair. Gray eyes inflate within each socket. Even his uniform weaves itself whole from the scraps and threads scattered around his cell floor. Printed across the back of his jersey is a big number 54 and the name Patterson. To me, the football man says, "I had a part of my foot over the scrimmage line when the ref blew his whistle to signal the start of play. That's 'offsides.'"

I ask, 'And that's in the Bible?"

With all his hair and skin replaced, you can tell the football man is only a high schooler. Sixteen, maybe seventeen years old. Even as he talks, little silver wires weave themselves between his teeth, becoming a mouthful of braces. "Two minutes into the second quarter," he says, "I intercepted a pass and got sacked by a defensive tackle — pow! Now, I'm here."

Again, Leonard shouts, "But why am I here?"

"Because you don't believe in the one true God," says Patterson, the football player. Now that he's covered in skin again, his new eyes keep glancing over at Babette.

She doesn't look up from her little mirror, but Babette makes faces, pursing her lips and tossing her hair, fluttering her eyelashes, fast. As my mom would tell you, "Nobody stands that straight when she's not on camera." Meaning: Babette loves the attention.

No, it's not fair. From within their respective cages, Patterson and Leonard both stare at Babette locked within hers. No one looks at me. If I wanted to be ignored I'd have stayed on earth as a ghost, watching my mom and dad walk around naked, opening the drapes and chilling rooms as I bully them to put on some clothes. Even that Ahriman demon showing up to tear me apart and devour me would be better than getting no attention whatsoever.

There it is, again — that nagging tendency to hope. My addiction.

While Patterson and Leonard ogle Babette, and Babette ogles herself, I pretend to watch the vampire bats flit around. I watch the surf crest and break in rolling brown waves on Shit Lake. I pretend to scratch the make-believe psoriasis on my face. In the neighboring cages, sinners huddle, weeping out of old habit. A damned soul dressed in the uniform of a Nazi soldier smashes his face, again and again, into the stone floor of his cell, crushing and collapsing his nose and forehead as if he were tapping a hard-boiled egg against a plate in order to shatter the shell. In the pause between each impact on the stone, his crushed nose and features inflate to their normal appearance. In another cell, a teenage kid wears a black leather biker jacket, an oversize safety pin piercing his cheek, his head shaved except for a stripe of hair, dyed blue and gelled to stand in a spiky Mohawk which runs from his forehead to the nape of his neck. As I watch, the leather-jacket punk reaches up to his cheek and flicks open the safety pin. He draws it out from the holes in his skin, then reaches through the bars of his cage and pokes the point of the open pin into the lock of his cell door, working the point around within the keyhole.

Still gazing at herself in her compact mirror, Babette asks of no one in particular, "What day is it?"

Leonard's arm crooks, instantly, and he looks at his diver's chronograph watch, saying, "It's Thursday. Three-oh-nine p.m." A beat later, he says, "No, wait… now it's three ten."

In the middle distance, a looming giant with the head of a lion, shaggy with black fur, with cat claws instead of hands, reaches into a cage and plucks out a wailing, flailing sinner, dangling him by his hair. In the same manner you might nibble grapes from a bunch, the demon's lips close around the man's leg. The demon's furry lion cheeks sink inward, hollowed, and the man's screams grow louder as the meat is sucked from the living bone. With one leg reduced to hanging bone, the demon begins to suck the meat from the second leg.

Despite all of this ruckus, Leonard and Patterson continue to watch Babette, who watches herself. The Ice Age of Dumbness.

With a muted clank, the punk wearing the leather jacket pries the tip of his safety pin, twisting it sideways within the lock on his cell door to trip the mechanism. He pulls the pin free, then wipes it against his blue jeans until the point is clean of rust and slime before thrusting it back into its previous place, piercing his cheek. At that the punk swings the cell door open and steps out of his cage. His Mohawk stands so tall the blue hair brushes the top of the doorframe.

Swaggering down the row of cells, the blue-Mohawk punk peers into each cage Inside one lies an Egyptian pharaoh or somebody who went to Hell for praying to the wrong god, crumpled on the floor, gibbering and drooling, one arm sprawled so that the hand rests near the cage bars. A fat diamond ring glitters on one finger, the stone in the four-carat range, D-grade, not cubic zirconium like Babette's cheapo earrings. Next to that cage, the punk kid stops and stoops. Reaching through the bars, he slips the ring off the wasted finger. The kid pockets the diamond ring inside his motorcycle jacket. Standing, he catches me watching him and saunters toward my cell.

He wears black motorcycle boots — note: an excellent footwear choice for Hades — the ankle of one boot wrapped with a bicycle chain, his other ankle wrapped with a knotted, soiled red bandanna. Pimples swell into red points dotting his pale chin and forehead, in contrast to his bright green eyes. As the Mohawk punk struts closer, one hand slips into his jacket pocket and scoops out something. From a long toss away, still walking, he says, "Catch," and his hand swings, tossing the object, which flashes in a long, high arc, flying between my cage bars, falling to the point where my hands clap together to catch it.

Acting the part of a complete Miss Slutty Slutovitch, Babette continues to ignore Patterson and Leonard but holds her compact angled to spy on the punk kid, scrutinizing him so closely that when the thrown object flashes, the bright flash bounces off her mirror, reflected into her eyes.

"What's a nice girl like you," the Mohawk kid asks me, "doing in a place like this?" When he talks the safety pin in his cheek jerks around, flashing orange in the firelight. He struts up to the bars of my cell and winks one green eye at me, but looks at Babette without looking directly at her. He's clearly touched the dirty iron bars, then touched his face, his jeans, his boots, smearing the filth all over himself.

No, it's not fair, but dirt does manage to make some people look more sexy.

"My name is Madison," I tell him, "and I'm a hope-aholic."

Yes, I know the word tool. I may be dead and jailbait and boy-crazy, but I can still be used to make another girl jealous. Warm from the punk's pocket, lying in the palm of my hand is the stolen diamond ring. My first gift from a boy.

Drawing the oversize safety pin from his cheek, the Mohawk kid pokes the sharp point into my keyhole and begins to pick the lock.