Damned

VIII

As our little group stands atop the ridge overlooking the Sea of Insects, a looming figure stomps toward us. Each of its thundering footfalls trembles the surrounding hillocks, bringing down dusty cascades of ancient finger-and toenail clippings, and the figure stands so tall that we can discern only the silhouette of it as outlined against the flaming orange sky. So violently does the giant's weight shake the ground that the cliff on which we stand heaves and shimmers beneath us, the loose nail parings threatening to subside and deposit us into the seething, devouring bugs.

It's Leonard who speaks first, whispering only the single word, "Psezpolnica."

In our immediate distress, Babette appears to be far too self-absorbed, the poor quality of her fashion accessories too blatant a metaphor — impossible to ignore — representing her choice of surface appeal over inner quality. Patterson, the athlete, seems frozen in his conventional, traditional attitudes, a person for whom the rules of the universe were fixed very early and will always remain unchanged. In contrast, the rebellious Archer presents himself as a knee-jerk rejection of… everything. Of my newfound companions Leonard shows the most promise of evolving into something more than an acquaintance. And, yes, once more I recognize promise as a symptom of my nagging, deeply ingrained tendency to hope.

Prompted by this hope, made manifest by my instinct for self-preservation, when Patterson very slowly fits his foot-hall helmet over his head and says, "Run," my stout legs don't hesitate. As Archer and Babette and Patterson each flee on their own tangent, I run beside Leonard.

"Psezpolnica," he pants, legs working against the soft, malleable layers of nails, his bent arms pumping the air for momentum, Leonard says, "The Serbians call her 'the tornado woman of midday."' Gasping for breath, running beside me, his shirt pocketful of pens bouncing against his skinny chest, Leonard says, "Her specialty is driving people insane, lopping off their heads and ripping them limb from limb…”'

In a glance, I look back to see a woman who towers as tall as a tornado, her face so distant it seems tiny against the sky, as straight-up and high above me as the sun at noon. Like a flaring funnel cloud, her long black hair whips and streams out from her head, and she hesitates as if deciding which of us to pursue.

Beyond the giantess, Babette staggers, both of her cheesy, way-shoddy shoes flapping around her feet, hobbling and tripping her. Patterson hunches his shoulders, dodging and weaving, his cleats throwing up a rooster tail of nail filings as if he were running a football through some defensive line, headed for a touchdown. Archer rips off his leather jacket and tosses it aside, sprinting full-tilt, the chains looped around his one boot clanking.

The tornado demon crouches, reaching lower with a hand, the fingers spread as wide as a parachute, steadily lowering toward the stumbling, screaming figure of Babette.

Granted, there exists an element of play in all of this panic; having witnessed the demon Ahriman render and consume Patterson, and Patterson's subsequent regeneration to a redheaded, gray-eyed footballer, on some level I'm aware that my absolute death is no longer possible. All of that said, the process of being plucked apart and devoured still seems like it would sting like all get-out.

As the towering tornado demon reaches to snatch a screaming Babette, Leonard shouts for her to dive. Cupping both his hands to make a megaphone around his mouth, Leonard shouts, "Dive and dig!"

So that you might learn from my ignorance, it's a tried-and-true strategy when escaping danger in Hell to dig into the nearest available terrain. Hell offers scant cover, no flora to speak of — except for the inexplicable accumulations of Beemans gum, Walnettos, Sugar Daddys, and popcorn balls — thus the only consistent, ready manner in which to conceal oneself is to tunnel until completely buried, in this case by the vast accumulation of castoff fingernail shards.

Distasteful as this might sound, for this piece of advice, you owe me.

Not that you're ever actually going to die. Perish the thought. Not with your hours and hours invested in aerobic exercise.

On the other hand, if you do find yourself dead and in Hell, menaced by Psezpolnica, do as Leonard would recommend: Dive and dig.

My hands burrow into a hillside of loose, cascading parings, and with every inch I dig a steady landslide of the same avalanches down upon me, prickly and itchy, abrasive but not entirely unpleasant, until I'm completely interred, Leonard interred at my side.

About my own death, my death-death, I remember very little. My mother was launching a feature film, and my father had gained a controlling interest in something— Brazil, I think — so of course they'd brought home an adopted child from… someplace awful. My brother du jour, his name was Goran. He of the brutish, hooded eyes and beetling brow, an orphan sourced from some war-torn, former-socialist hamlet, Goran had been starved of the early physical contact and imprinting required for a human being to develop any sense of empathy. With his reptilian gaze and broad pit-bull jaw, he arrived forever and always as damaged goods, but this only added to his appeal. Unlike any of my previous siblings, now apportioned to various boarding schools and long forgotten, I found myself quite smitten with Goran.

For his part, Goran had merely to cast his churlish, ravenous eyes upon my parents' wealth and lifestyle, and he was determined to curry my acceptance. Add to those factors one overly large baggy of marijuana supplied by my dad, plus my impulse to finally smoke the nasty herb, if only to bond with Goran, and that's the sum total I'm able to recall about the circumstances of my fatal overdose.

Currently, lying fully buried in a grave of fingernails, I listen to my heartbeat. I hear my breath rushing in my nostrils. Yes, without a doubt, it's hope that makes my heart continue to beat, my lungs to breathe. Old habits die hard. Above me, the ground heaves and shifts with every step of the tornado demon. The parings trickle into my ears, stifling any sound of Babette's screams. Stifling the clicking din from the Sea of Insects. I lie buried here, counting my heartbeats, resisting an urge to dig one hand sideways in search of Leonard's hand.

In the next instant my arms are pinned to my sides. The fingernails press in close, tightly around me, and I'm lifted into the stinking sulfurous air, rising into the flaming orange sky.

The fingers of a huge hand are clasped around me as tight as a straitjacket. This giant hand has been thrust into the loose soil and has plucked me the way one might pull a carrot or radish from its buried slumber.

Ye gods, I might be the privileged, wealthy, insulated scion of celebrity parents, but I still know where babies and carrots come from… although I was never entirely certain where Goran originated.

Soaring into the air, I can survey it all: the Sea of Insects, the Great Plains of Broken Glass, the Great Ocean of Wasted Sperm, an endless array of cages containing the damned. Below me spreads the whole geography of Hell, including demons wandering hither and yon to gobble hapless victims. At the highest point of my ascent, a canyon of wet teeth await. A wind of rank, wet breath buffets me with a stink worse than the communal toilets at Ecology Clamp. There heaves a monstrous tongue carpeted with taste buds the size of red mushrooms. All of this ringed by lips as fat as greased tractor tires.

The hand brings me to the mouth, where my arms stretch to brace against the upper lip. My feet push against the lower lip, and like a fishbone I hold myself too wide and rigid to be swallowed. Under my hands, the lips feel surprisingly plush, leathery like a banquette in a good restaurant, but very warm. Like touching the upholstery of a Jaguar someone's just driven from Paris to Rennes.

So vast is the demon's face that all I can see is the mouth. In my peripheral vision, I'm vaguely aware of eyes above me, broad and glassy as department store windows, except curved outward, bulging. Those eyes, fenced by the black pickets of huge eyelashes. I'm conscious of a nose the size of a mud hut with two open doorways, each door hung with a curtain of fine nostril hairs.

The hand pushes me against the teeth. The tongue thrusts to make wet contact with the buttoned front of my cardigan sweater.

In the moment I am resigned to my immediate fate, to be masticated and swallowed, my bones cast aside like the skeleton of every Cornish game hen I've ever eaten, at that instant the mouth screams. What occurs seems less like a scream than an air-raid siren blasting point-blank into my face. My hair, my cheeks and clothing, these are all blown and rippling, snapping like a flag in a hurricane.

One of my Bass Weejuns slips from my foot, falling, tumbling, dropping to land on the ground beside a tiny figure sporting a bold blue Mohawk. Even at this distance, I can see it's Archer standing beside the giant's sizable bare foot. Having removed the oversize safety pin from his cheek, Archer is plunging the point, repeatedly removing it and plunging it, again and again, into the arch of the demon's foot.

In the melee which ensues, I feel myself half dropped, half heaved, half lowered until I land in the soft, scratchy fingernails. The same moment as my impact, hands grasp me, human hands, Leonard's hands, and pull me to shelter beneath the slurry of nail parings… but not before I see the same parachute hand which caught me now catch Archer and lift him — cursing, kicking his boots, slashing with his pin — to where the teeth snap shut, and in a single bite guillotine off his vivid blue head.