This is a story of Hades. You may have heard of him. Or you think you've heard of him. What you've heard is only what he wants you to think you know. He's twisted it all around in his highly amused hands, spinning tales of great peril. The thing is, he's not as old as the world; he was actually only brought to existence a small while ago. Perhaps even at this very moment. He's just as scary as the stories say, though, even scarier actually. And no, he doesn't have blue flames on his head; that's merely a story. A story is entertaining and may even contain a smidgen of knowledge, but for our purposes here, it is not enough. So, to specify from earlier, this is not merely a story about Hades, this is the story about Hades, the one that matters.
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”What you did to git here?”
They were sitting on the edge of an artificial pond.
”My mother-in-law,” said the Stork.
A bubble popped in the pool of gore, right on cue.
The man talking to him looked at the Stork for a second. The Stork decided he did not like the man's face; there was something damn ugly about it, and it didn't just stop on the surface – there was something utterly disgusting about him that wormed its way into his core. When it was obvious the Stork wouldn't grin and say, ”Gotcha”, or otherwise indicate it was merely a joke, the man burst out laughing, slapping his thigh. The Stork decided he didn't like the man's laugh either.
”You one sick puppy, aren't ya?” said the man the Stork had decided he didn't like one bit. ”Yer damn wife's twice-damned mother.”
”I guess smashing her face in with a baseball bat thirty-four times merits a 'sick puppy'. And the killing of rest of the guests at the wedding, too, but it was only a small wedding, so not too big of a job. The sin was just as big though, in the end of it all.”
Stork ignored the man and his horrid features that had turned into a horrid mask of disbelief. He breathed in the stench of rotten flesh and burning flesh and smoldering flesh and flayed flesh as if it were a long savoury drag on a smoke, letting it flee through his nostrils. He wrapped his long fingers around the skull of his wife – or rather a very good copy of it – and took a sip of the curious concoction splashing inside, a mixture of blood and bile and some less savoury elements. He grimaced and gulped the rest of it down. He then flung the offending skull into the boiling blood, watched it disappear, leaving only a ring of disturbed once-life. The man was scratching at a scab that was belching out something truly foul and explaining how he had done nothing bad, no, nothing, for he was innocent.
”No-one is innocent,” the Stork said absent-mindedly.
It was the time of the Interval, the time of renewal. It was almost over, too. The Stork got up and stretched like a man reborn, which was more or less true. If you cut out the 'born' part and just went with 're', it would be inarguably true. Being born was out of the question when you had already died, and since you can't be killed more than once, the residents of Hell hadn't bothered to come up with a word to replace 'born', as death didn't quite cut it. So it was merely Re, and mind the capital 'R'.
A fountain of blood erupted five feet away from the Stork and a slab of meat which must have at some point been a human rose from the ground. The thing that couldn't even be called a corpse writhed on the craggy rocks, flailing a stump of an arm around. The Stork took a step back to avoid a splattering of tainted blood and bits of meat. The raw, putrid flesh slowly swelled in the middle and then split, revealing a row of grinning teeth, all of them a foot long and dripping venom down the demon's narrowly bearded chin. The ugly man squealed in terror, paled and went down on his knees, cradling his head in his arms, stuttering, please don't hurt me, nothing wrong, nothing wrong, wasn't me, if you would be so kind. The demon and the Stork mutually ignored him.
The demon didn't come out of the not-corpse, choosing to leave its translocation half-way. Which meant it wasn't planning on staying long enough to be bothered to mutilate another body as a sacrifice for its magic. Which then again hinted at a very, very short stay.
”A messenger then,” said the Stork, ”but from who?”
The demon licked its lips and ran a taloned paw over its mouth, clearing out a portion of the venom for the time being. In a voice not quite human, as if it were forcing a beast's mouth to utter the syllables, it whispered in a guttural voice, ”The massster wants to see you. Now. Come.”
It was the Stork's turn to pale; his eyes widened in shock. This was not good. His every instinct dragged against his halting steps, yet he walked closer. A demon's invitation isn't something lightly treaded upon and the Stork wasn't going to bring his toes anywhere near it. If he had a heart, it would have been spouting out blood into his head, making it throb in maddening rhythym. For once he was happy that it had been gouged out with a sharp spoon at the massive gates when he first arrived. He came to a halt in front of the demon's head. Sucking in all his fear and throwing up a bravado that would have had Johnny Bravo himself applauding, he met the demon's eyes. They were actually quite the striking shade of green.
”Now what?” he asked.
”Oh,” said the demon, slurping in a measure of venom noisily, ”the infamous Stork has never ridden on the wingsss of magic, has he? Don't you worry one bit, little birdy, the firssst time's always the funnest. Just take a hold of my hand.”
This of course made the Stork more than a bit worried. Against his better judgement he reached out his long, slim fingers and accepted the taloned limb the demon was offering. At that moment a scream erupted from behind him. He twitched his head around and saw the ugly man suspended mid-air, a stake driven clean through his body. The time of Interval was over and the Time had begun. Intervals usually lasted up to twenty minutes; the Time lasted for an eternity, or rather just as long as it took for the residents of Hell to die, which could be considered an eternity in human minutes, thus the statement that it lasts for eternity.
Long story short, Hell lived up to its name.
A steady trickle of blood was flowing down the ugly man's scabbed cheek and his mouth was opening and closing, much like a fish out of water, attempting to force air down past the narrow end of the stake lodged in his throat. He was new then, all the older residents knew that one didn't need air – you were dead after all. The newbies had a hard time learning this; the Stork had gotten used to it a long, long time ago.
He watched shamelessly as the long pole started shaking in time to a distant drum beat, lurching from side to side, the ugly man's eyes rolling back in to his head. To him, it was like watching an erotic film, the slight guilty feeling you got from observing naked people was much the same as watching someone suffering and bleeding. It was the fact that they were both so very taboo, the Stork had decided once.
The demon saw him staring at the impaled figure and mistook his fascination for relief. ”You'll get your turn of that too, so don't consider yourself too lucky. All in good time. But now, we meet the massster.”
Talons sharp as you like bit into the Stork's elegant hand and dragged him down into the not-corpse. There was no way that corpse could have fit the Stork, not even mentioning the demon already within, but he felt himself being siphoned in and before he knew it, he was inside the stinking meat, watching the split abdomen stitching itself closed.
He could feel the humid breath of the demon beside him, knowing very well that one twitch of its talons would rend him open like a can-opener would to a can; and just like the can-opener was designed to cut open cans, those claws were designed to do just that: tear humans apart as effectively as possible. A lump of toxic saliva splattered onto his shoulder, burning a hole in the tender flesh. It would have been cool if the Stork would have barely flinched, but he decided not to even notice it, which is just damn creepy.
”When's the fun part?” asked the Stork as the last bits of ragged flesh embraced above, leaving man and beast in darkness. The darkness smelt faintly of ass.
”Shit,” said the demon. However, it wasn't the word the Stork well knew and utilized. Something about the way the demon enunciated it in its guttural near-human voice made it faintly, yet distinctly, different.
The Stork said, ”What the hell kinda answer is that?”, and then the pain hit him. It him like a pitchfork to the crotch, it hit like a lawnmower slowly making its way across your face, like a wrecking ball that doesn't quite knock your head off your shoulders, rather leaving it dangling by a few strands. It felt like all his inner organs, sans the heart for reasons obvious, were squeezed out of the tip of his penis, pummeled with meat grinders, fed to a hound and the excrete stuffed back in the way it had come out.
The Stork felt his very existence wavering. A moment of panic flooded over him, overwhelming him with terror. Technically, you couldn't permanently die once you were already dead, but he was certain that if he were to unravel now, there was no coming back.
He waded through a swamp of fear and sweat and mind-numbing pain, clenched and set his jaw, and he focused on his gut; it was his gut that had kept him alive and, well, dead for as long as he remembered. He focused every thought on his gut and slowly, slowly spun the web of his existence around and around it, like you would roll up a loose string into a ball.
Slowly, slowly the feeling of loss diminished and then vanished completely. The Stork tied the final knot in his essential web and dared to breathe again. Then he realized the futility of breathing and stopped doing it; he was no newbie. As quickly as the pain had come, it evaporated, apparently soaked in by the not-corpse, judging by the sudden flailing of the death around them and the silent scream the Stork was sure he heard out of the corner of his hearing.
He felt something brush against his cheek and the flesh above them ripped open, splattering the Stork with bits of gore – this time, he had nowhere to dodge it and he felt the wormy warmth embrace his upturned face. In the gloomy light that flooded the human cocoon, he noticed the demon holding its taloned appendages in the air, dragging them through the air in time with the flesh parting.
Once it had opened enough, the Stork simply stepped out on a whim, knowing well that it wasn't wide enough for the demon to follow him yet. A small victory, but a victory none-the-less. He cast his eyes around the place he was standing in and took in the towering walls which seemed never to end, even as he craned his neck as far back as it went. They were a dark purple, almost black, and looked like something thick and oozy had at some point in time congealed into the ugly scab it now was. Heck, knowing the place, it was a potent possibility.
Pillars rose out of the earth – there was no floor, the ground was wet and slushy – leaning at precarious and ungainly angles, supporting the ceiling that might or might not have been somewhere up there only with the sheer number of them. It didn't only faintly smell of ass in that hall.
”Who killed a blob of crap in here and left it to decay?” the Stork asked the demon, who had just climbed out of the human pod like a very ugly butterfly that forgot to grow wings and grew talons and fangs and fur and a goatee dripping venom instead.
The demon sniffed the air, its snake-like nostrils fluttering wildly. It grinned a sharpy-toothy grin. ”That,” it said, ”is the smell of massster.”
”I see why he's the boss. He won every match by default.”
There was a blur of movement and a talon was gently twirling circles on the flesh of his neck. ”I wouldn't insult the massster in his home, if I were you.”
The Stork knew that it was just running its mouth. If he were killed, he'd just be Re'd again, just like the countless other times it had happened. Sure, it would hurt, but the Stork had gotten used to it. You did so or went insane, but as he was pretty sure he was insane already, he had no choice but to bear the pain. Besides, the master wouldn't want to meet a corpse. A corpse-to-be is always much more interesting.
So he merely said, ”Kay.”, slid the talon off his throat and stepped away. The hate and anger pouring out of the demon was nearly palpable and the Stork started to sweat from the heat it was radiating. He reminded it that the massster was waiting and they headed off, the reluctant and seething demon leading the way with the Stork in tow.
The Stork kept up a continuous string of are-we-there-yets and how-'bout-nows, because, let's be honest here, on how many occasions can you make fun of a demon and get away with it? The demon chose not to entertain him with an answer. Not even when they entered through a great, obscure, more-than-slightly-leaning-to-the-left archway.
”-there yet?” said the Stork and walked straight into the demon's back. Now, the Stork wasn't a small guy, never had been, but compared to the demon, he was a featherweight way out of his league. For the first time in his life, it was the Stork who went flying from a collision with another being. It suffices to say he didn't like it one bit. He got up, disgruntled, plucked a few motley furs out of his mouth, wiped off a bucketful of mud off his shoulders and locked eyes with the Lord of the Underworld.
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