“BLACK BALLED AGAIN”
“Now, my son, since your pain threshold has increased three greatness levels, we are going to enter the second level, or the next dimension of torture.”
“There are others?” the satyr asked casually, examining his reconstructed body.
“They are infinite,” the father said.
He mounted his son from behind. As the sound of pounding became deafening, the demon’s wings folded around them, and they vanished into another plane.
They appeared in a new place: The Second Level, or Stair of Torture. They watched a small hooded woman with a wooden bucket come to a boiling river.
“Look what she does,” the demon shrieked in (mock) surprise.
She lowered her bucket into the undulating crimson, and then set it down on the gray bank. She lowered her face into it and loudly slurped its contents.
“See, my son, what a great thing she does! She drinks all the foul deeds of mankind, for they boil in this great river. There is more to her sacrifice than meets the eye, and she does it for no one to see but her lord, her demon.”
Behind her appeared the largest, most muscular demon the satyr had seen yet, at least twice the size of Red. He glittered entirely of gold: his skin, hair and eyes. And he must have been pleased, for he snatched the woman up by her head and began beating her against an oaken tree thousands and thousands of times, without pause.
In another time, the demon showed his son a small cave. “Look at the theater and see the drama. Only one play is performed here, and the beings call it, ‘The Single Reverent Thing.’ Look within, my son, and tell me what you see.”
The satyr did so. “A young lad is walking down a street on a sunny day. From his right a bullet enters his brain, causing a huge hole to appear in the left side of his head. He falls to the ground and is still. Later he awakens and realizes the wound has healed.
“The lad wonders at the meaning of all that when a voice rings out above him. ‘Never tell anyone what happened to you today. Make it our secret and I will see to it that you have absolute dominion over all creatures, everywhere.’ The lad agrees.”
“Yesss, my son,” the demon whispered, red stains flowing down his blistered cheeks. “It is the only history lesson any of us here cares to learn. You would be wise to do likewise.”
In his ecstasy, the demon threw the satyr to the broiling floor and coupled with him for three thousand generations.
“My son,” the demon shrieked, “behold, another level!”
The environment flickered around them. When it righted itself, they were in a burning forest.
“Let me mount you in my joy. Let your jaws crack for screaming as I oppress my own kin.”
And he did. The satyr was sexually dominated within the forest of yellow flame-trees for a [thousand parts of] time.
On one of the rare occasions that Professor Delaney spoke, she asked the old man, “In your fiction, do you really propose that there is religion in Hell, uh, I mean, Infernus?”
“Oh yes,” he said. “But, only because it amuses me. Just a trifle to amuse others, not that there are such things, really.”
“Oh,” she said, momentarily satisfied. She crossed her hands in front of her, holding her wrists, and waited for him to continue.
“In fact,” he said, realizing there might be a need for clarification, “if I had followed the Biblical model, the book would have been boring. How could I have made an exciting adventure about screaming in the dark, for that is the Biblical model. No, I wanted my version to be exciting and fun.”
“It’s hardly ‘fun’!” said a student.
He looked to the rear of the class but could not determine who was speaking. He laughed. “And there will be more of religion. Actually, it’s coming up in the very next chapter. I have put hate cults there. They are eternally punished, also. For no other reason than it amused me.”