Devil Entendre Read online

  Back in the lobby the only worker available to help me was Hatred Nouveau Lady. She caught my moment of hesitation, denying me the chance to escape.

  “Yes?”

  “I’d like to sign up for spa treatment. The, uh, eel thing. You know, in the ice pond or whatever it is.”

  “We are all booked up for the foreseeable future. Perhaps you’d prefer a mud bath?”

  “Allow me to just mention my relationship back home with a Mr. Boedicher. I’ve been to his house. I’ve seen the ponds and the windowless outbuildings. The caviar. He explained your whole import/export deal with him. Know what I mean?” I arched my eyebrows suggestively.

  An air of comprehension settled about her features, and a warm gust it must have been because with it her expression thawed as did her glacial disposition. “It looks like I was mistaken, sir. We had a late cancellation after all. If you’re ready now I can escort you myself.”

  “Sure. What’s the cost?”

  “This one’s on the house.”

  And with that we were off, exiting through a nearby door concealed by the fact it was made to be indistinguishable from the wall into which it was set. Hatred Nouveau Lady transmogrified into Chatty Cathy during our stroll through the greenhouse, the stygian tunnels bored through the ice, over a rope bridge across a yawning subterranean chasm, up spiraling stairs to the surface once more, and over well-cultivated paths of stone and ice. Expecting one of those ill-conceived ice hole swimming excursions modified to the metrosexual set I instead found a warm spring known locally as Odöda Källvatten. My guide informed me the loose translation was “Eternal Springs.” It was large enough to accommodate one hundred, and it was easy to imagine those school girls splashing each other playfully before illness laid them low. It struck me what a boon it must be to local youths and adults alike to escape the tedious, relentless winter in such a way.

  Then the immature eels came into focus. They could only be described as a swarm of baleful albino flesh strips writhing against each other and reason itself, the same general size and build as the elver in Adhan’s image files.

  “Would you mind telling me what species of eel these are?”

  “These are Titanmoray Serpentes, native only to our land.”

  “Can you spell that for me?”

  Her smile spoke “absolutely not,” after which she said, “Now please remove your clothes. It is our tradition to bathe at Odöda Källvatten in the nude.”

  When taking my clothes she seemed to make some furtive gesture. I stripped down to my underwear, but had no intention of going further than that and said as much. There was something odd about her movements at the periphery of my vision. With mounting apprehension I asked over my shoulder, “You’re not going to be joining me…are you?”

  She declined to answer, choosing instead to say, “Permit me to assist.” Suddenly her massive hands took hold of my briefs and yanked with godless strength, succeeding not only in pulling them halfway down my thighs, but also in ripping them to uselessness. “Oh dear. My bad.”

  “My bad?!” Keeping my back to her I scanned the area for newcomers, spying none.

  “I’ll go dispose of these and have housekeeping send a fresh pair along. Yttre Gudar Rastplats extends its apologies. Now in you go.” With that and a shove the scoundrel finally departed, not waiting to see if I drowned in the water.

  For long moments I got my bearings, straightening and allowing buoyancy to assert itself. The water was indeed comfortable, and with the beautiful scenery I contemplated enjoying the experience. The vulnerability of complete nudity put any restive notions at arm’s length, and more disturbing still was the realization Hatred Nouveau Lady had absconded not just with my ruined undergarments, but the rest of my clothing altogether. Then the creaking, groaning, and rumbling intruded on my senses. They were slow, creeping noises not unlike those used by the film industry to portray stresses on moldering ship timbers in the 1700s as waves gently manipulate a vessel at sea. It was easy enough to discern the sounds emanated from the surrounding ice itself, but for whatever reason they remained disconcerting.

  Then came the eels. Scattering after my initial entry to the water the white devils returned in a dementedly agitated state. Using my hands to prevent any accidental entrance to my body as the miniature brutes squirmed against me, I began to contemplate a nude mad dash across the ice and into the buildings. Before such action could be undertaken, though, something—perhaps a renegade current—dragged me away under the ice, away from light and hot or cold, through waters filled with darkness and soft indescribable particles and above all massive pressure, then suddenly up, up, up into life-giving air.

  I had been deposited in a tidal pool at a secluded stretch of rocky beach. Despite the cold neither wind nor breeze claimed the cove, preventing a deadly situation. The beach was composed of smooth rock, not sand, rounded by the millennia into circles and ovals the size of hands or feet. Nearby, where the black waters encroached against the rocks, lay a carcass, recently dead and enormous. The thing was unrecognizable at first, my only thought an absurd one: that I had stumbled upon the wreckage of a double-decker meat bus. Then the overall shape, coupled with fins and patches of intact skin, forced the conclusion this thing had been a whale. Further examination, conducted with my nose protected against the prevailing charnel odor, revealed knobs about the head and lower jaw, and from past whale-sighting cruises it became recognizable as a humpback whale, roughly forty feet in length. Ghastly wounds had been inflicted on it, stripping much of the blubber and striated muscle tissue from the skeleton. Even the bones themselves had been slashed and gouged.

  Worse still was the realization that one of the wounds had a trajectory suggesting it originated within the animal, rupturing the abdominal cavity and lower ribcage. This, coupled with the next sight, left my head spinning in the effort to suppress analytical thought; an enormous, deep, serpentine track lead away from the gaping, gory burst-cavity, and not to the waiting sea but to the tidal pool I just emerged from. The track was two feet wide and at least six inches deep, suggesting horrible enormity.

  Most disconcerting of all was the recognizable signs of healing among certain lengths of the wounding, suggesting this savagery—or a significant portion—had occurred whilst the whale was still living.

  In the distance beyond this horror loomed queer tendrils of dark rock branching over the water. From it hung some of the endangered birds Hatred Nouveau Lady had mentioned, sleeping upside down during daylight hours, their silhouettes disquietingly gargantuan even at a distance. There was no trace of the caviar industry as claimed.

  There is not much left of me, so I’ll be brief. They nabbed me wandering nude in the wilderness and took me straight back and to Yttre Gudar Rastplats. I was locked away with the others, in the basement, presumably for seeing too much. Below the ice construction is what looks like the sub levels from some antediluvian, dilapidated castle complex, or monastery, or who knows what. They strap you to a table, force your mouth open, insert Jennings gags and ratchet them wide as possible. Pliers remove teeth. Surgical scissors are inserted down your throat to server vocal cords. All without anesthesia.

  Impossible as it sounds, the worst was yet to manifest: after liberally-administered antibiotics I was thrown into the pit of humans. Bars divide us, but filthy water runs free between us, maybe a half-foot deep in places. We are twelve men, three boys, one girl, and nine women…but don’t bother trying to save us.

  Behind the front counter there were hundreds of those “!YOU’RE A WINNER!” postcards, and it’s my eternal shame that I left them unburned. Hopefully those reading this text will take action before it’s too late. I’m posting this all over the internet before they catch me; perhaps it’ll be in the news, or on a conspiracy website, or a humor site, or in a publication whose focus is of a darker vein, but it’ll get “out there.”
They send those abominable postcards out to poor districts, especially to single adults. They’re targeting people who aren’t spoken for by the authorities.

  They haven’t discovered the handheld device, not yet. One of the other victims seems to have been a private detective, probably hunting down a missing vacationer. After his demise curious scarring along his abdomen became noticeable. It turned out to be a wound forced to heal abnormally, creating a secret pouch within the folds of his flesh, which is where I found this handheld device stashed. Messages have gone out to the US Consulate, to my loved ones, to the State Department and military and police, but even if the authorities strike here the world’s populace needs to know, to understand, in order to defend themselves, for I fear this is something the governments of the world would sweep under the carpet if allowed to do so.

  Let’s begin with observations of another prisoner who is not so much a prisoner any longer: the eel never resided in his bladder, nor Boedicher’s. It veered off and took an even less desirable course to the testes as proven by the gruesomely distended and abused sack now housing something far larger and more malevolent than any sperm as ever outfitted an upright form, some restless, unnamable thing twisting incessantly, a female seeking release for its eggs through the host’s masturbatory exploits which—in this exaggeratedly stimulated state—are rather considerable, occupying almost half his waking time. Eventually the entire male genital apparatus ruptures and separates as would a rotten watermelon dropped from a highway overpass, from which is birthed something more akin to a salamander than eel in the fact that it has sprouted limbs, digits, and even facial characteristics. The man in the corner whose sack is thus far unruptured whispers bittersweet nothings to the beast residing within, working “caviar” out of himself all the while.

  If that were not abomination enough the mystery of those doomed births back home has been revealed. The hundreds of thousands of eggs remaining in women or up to a million in the children, as with the girls school field trip, they’re invaded when one of those colorless elver takes up residence in the human uterus. The result is thousands of squirming births per day, with indications the process of exhausting the egg supply can take almost a year. These women are restrained the entire time, fed both intravenously and through nasal tubing, with antibiotics administered all the while. They live the rest of their tortured days suspended in custom-made harnesses, limbless, resembling slowly-leaking eggs dangling from macramé plant hangers. Not surprisingly madness overtakes the females rather quickly, while the slowly-building abdominal distention grossly deforms them. They undergo full hip and shoulder disarticulations, although for amputation procedures so extreme there must be some form of anesthesia, or else they’d die of shock. And the constant splashing of their births dripping into befouled water surpasses even the highly-touted effects of Chinese water torture; roughly three births per minute, multiplied by four leaking female vessels. One is geriatric, one a child, and the other two are in their 30s or 40s. There had been a fifth when I arrived, who had just completed the birthing process, with her belly piled in on itself in folds, a deflated mass with nothing to support it, obviously the source of intense agony, at which point she was hauled out and tossed to the male offspring for consumption while still alive.

  Yes, just like the humpback whale. The males are enormous, and once gestation is complete they rip through your flesh and consume you, still alive and screaming, somehow extending your life through unknowable, damnable chemical processes before fully dislodging and escaping the ruined housing of your body. They circle us—men, boys, and five other women—in waters teeming with tiny female elver, waiting for the time their brethren no longer require our bodies as incubators. It happens when you consume the so-called caviar expelled from infested penises and testes. The same caviar Boedicher expelled and then fed me. It only takes a matter of days. Already there’s something that started like constipation, only at the wrong location within me. It’s grown to begin crowding out other internal components.

  Even now I can feel the strongest trashing against my innards as he consumes the rest of his litter. My turn is coming. Too weak to even sit up fully, must end communication now.

  List of names and addresses at end of document.

  Avenge us by saving yourselves. Wipe them out. Do not hesitate to end those like me. Save yourselves. Avenge us.

  The Hidden Beast

  The bells are chiming again, and the diminutive corpses of Marshington’s children slam repeatedly inside the ornate brass bells that are the basilica’s renowned feature. Located way up there the citizens cannot spy the spray of congealed blood following each ring. One would have the impression that the bells were painted a lovely shade of dark burgundy inside; one would be wrong. The scavenging birds swirling around the basilica’s heights make for quite a sight, but more impressive still are the varied birds of prey which feast on the scrabbling vermin. At a height of three hundred feet nobody can tell what all the ruckus is all about, nor further down at two hundred, a hundred feet.

  Gustav watches through his amateur telescope. He knows the truth, even if others don’t. The most precious possession of the citizenry has become a perversion, a den of evil, and somebody has to put an end to it. He decides that for once instead of simply watching he will take action.

  Down on the streets things seem normal enough. People go about their business, oblivious to the threat in their midst. How many of these oblivious businesspeople are missing children, he wonders, or related to the parents of the missing? Do they not care? He approaches the defiled structure with trepidation. What will be waiting for him within?

  They were all lined up stupidly like cows to the slaughter. After elbowing through the throngs of tourists and faithful he finds signs and brochures: See the sepulchers of the city founders! Come worship under the stained glass artistry of Mercer Spruance! Visit the gift shop!

  “Looking for something?” A young man with close-cropped blonde hair is standing nearby, in crisp clothes with a name tag. “Maybe I can be of assist—”

  Gustav punches his face, then runs.

  After the midnight services have come and gone, after the grieving have lit candles and sobbed prayers, after gruel has been doled out to the homeless, Gustav creeps into the basilica. Every little movement, every breath, seems to reverberate inside its cold stone walls. It’s most likely just his nervousness. He forces himself onward into the bowels of the foul building.

  He needs to see the evil with his own eyes, face-to-face. It’s not clear what he will—or even can—do. That’s not the point though.

  He stops, realizing something. At some point during his distracted musings he crossed a threshold into some manner of medieval inner sanctum. Muffled chants can be heard down some of the corridors. The aroma of incense is overpowering here. The dancing flames of torches cast all manner of strange shadows along the rough stone walls. A heavy wooden door on wrought iron hinges lay ahead. Gustav breathes deeply, clears his throat, and punches his own belly. Only then can he force his knuckles against the door.

  “Who’s there?” replies a warbly voice. “Just a moment…”

  Hearing no footsteps, Gustav gingerly rests an ear against the door, hearing nothing until it is thrown open by a monstrosity. He recoils from the myriad boneless appendages, the slime-drenched frock, the single-eye that fixes on him.

  “What do you think you’re doing? Who let you in here?”

  “Justice let me in here, you sick—”

  “Hey!” It advances, he retreats another step. “We’re not quite as dumb as we seem around here. We know who you are, seen you watching us.”

  “Bet you’re worried about what I’m up to?” Gustav laughs. “If you only knew!”

  The thing chuckles, circles him. “It doesn’t matter ’what you’re up to.’ There are far greater designs at work than you seem capable of grasping.” />
  “Designs?” Gustav scanned the area to ensure he wasn’t standing on a pentagram or some other demonic sigil.

  “We are but puppets on cosmic strings, blowing in the wind. Or, on the breath of forces from beyond.”

  “Strange that even a monster like yourself resorts to hyperbole and dogma.”

  “Have you no faith?” it asks with a snarl, approaching.

  “Faith? Yes, I have faith in abundance, more faith than any of those you’ve killed. Faith? Sure. I have faith in entropy… faith in spite…faith in the fact that we’ll all be desecrated every day of our lives by powers beyond our control. I have faith in that, profound faith. Yes, we’re all suffering in Hell already, this is Hell right here, this Earth, there is nothing beyond it. No afterlife. No reward. No punishment. You know why? Because there is no ’God,’ either above or below, nothing to validate any of our actions either good or bad. Just us, just us, and we dictate the multitude of monotonous sufferings and oppression and tears, we have since before we can remember, and we’ll do it all the way to our extinction, yep, the last two people on Earth will be struggling and cursing each other and hating and suffering and then dead. What for? Nothing. Maybe it was all just to amuse ourselves in the beginning, who knows. Now it’s boring. Sure, we cry and pretend to be hurt like we didn’t know it was coming. But after tens of thousands of years I mean, really, let’s be honest, huh? This is my faith. The faith in torturous, unending, unyielding stupidity.”