Chapter One~
The grating alarm of the bedroom's digital clock jolted a groan from Mrs. Mayberr. She rolled over, reached out, and swatted its off button as a fair-sized, pink dildo rolled out from under the covers.
A quick trip to the toilet, her teeth brushed to a sparkling gold, and a quick shower had her feeling figuratively alive again.
Dressed, she nibbled on toast in her apartment's dining nook, absently watching television. Humming an embryonic melody, she began working out, in a notebook labeled "Syllabus Songbook," some educational lyrics.
"Hmm," Mayberry pondered, tapping her pen against one of her thick horns. "What rhymes with 'ampersand?' 'Understand?'"
"Live from Crime Square in Pentagram City, it's Good Mourning, Pride Ring," a cheery voice announced to an equally lively theme song. "With Burn-adette Cinders and Chaz Hindenberg."
Mayberry glanced up to see the two up-beat Sinners hosts: a woman whose hair was done up in a blazing coif of flame and her co-host, a dapper gentleman in a singed, smoking suit, whose perpetually sooty face still wore a dazzling grin.
"Dana Downcast on Weather," the roll-call continued, showcasing a blue-haired woman standing by her display board, discharging mild cracks of electricity from her body.
"And Bookie Ringer on Sports." Alongside her, a male Sinner was dressed in a striped, bullet-riddled outfit decorated with the four suits of playing cards.
Burn-adette gave her signature greeting to start off, "Good Mourning, First Ring, and now, the first thing. A lull in fighting between Overlords remained tense for now. However, minions and supporters of one of the Overlords, Ancient Greek sorceress Zenobia, are petitioning to legally change any territory gained into an annex of Pluto under the dominion of foreign lord Hades."
"When asked to comment on what his rival was planning, the Overlord Stannysh replied, 'She's still going on about Hades, that goat-fucking hippy? I'll have to re-introduce Z to the Twenty-first Century with a bullet in her head.'"
Both hosts chuckled at the comment, with Chaz adding, "A generational gap in the making. Meanwhile, the rash of kidnappings plaguing Pentagram City and, in fact, most other cities throughout Hell continues unabated. Police are baffled at the speed of these attacks, and no one has discovered a motive for them, as no ransoms have been asked."
"Wow! I guess those firearm lessons will really come in handy now. Huh, Chaz?" his partner quipped.
The elevator doors parted, and as Mayberry stepped into the lobby, she could see the commotion through the front windows.
Pentagram City's finest were milling in front of their patrol cars, muttering in response to the loud chatter from their walkie-talkies. Curious pedestrians were shooed away from what looked like a crime scene.
Hoping not to interfere with the policedemons' work, Mayberry exited from the lobby cautiously.
"Excuse me, but could I get to the parking lot?" she asked an Imp cop nearby. "I have to go to work."
The demon nodded absently. "Yeah."
"Mayberry?" came a voice she hadn't expected to hear this morning and, with a sigh, knew no good would come from its source.
"Oh, I'm so glad you're okay," Ms. Tombs, the landlady, gushed. She rushed over and hugged the teacher, transitioning into a spirited grope of Mayberry's behind. "Can you believe this happened on my property?"
After slapping the offending hand away, Mayberry asked, "What's happening? What's going on?"
"Marcus, that Sinner up on four, got snatched in the parking lot," Tombs explained. "Mrs. Greasley, y'know, the busybody with the bad eyes, well, she said that she saw him getting out of his car earlier this morning, but someone jumped him."
"Who?"
"The kidnapper that's on the news, obviously. Somebody's been hitting Sinners for months now. Anyway, Greasley said that she couldn't see much because it was so foggy. So, I called the cops, and here we are."
Mayberry glanced into the lot. A small knot of officers watched a tow truck pull a sedan carefully from its confines before they returned to their cars, parked outside the lot's fence.
"Well, I guess they've got things under control, now," Mayberry surmised. "I've gotta get to class."
Tombs shook her head. "Oh, they weren't here to investigate, lamb chop. They were here to clean up."
"Clean up?" Mayberry asked. Years of watching earthly crime dramas gave her enough of a grasp of procedures to notice that something was off about the cops'. "They weren't gathering clues or anything?"
Tombs gave a sympathetic yet horny smile as she approached her again. "I keep forgetting that you're still kind of new around here. That's okay; I like showing virgins the ropes."
"Do I need to use the spray bottle?" Mayberry reminded her once she saw the typically sly, predatory glint return in her eyes.
"Fine," Tombs sighed. "Cops are only allowed to solve crimes done by Sinners, not to Sinners. Any crimes that happen to us, like these kidnappings, are part of the wonderful service we get from Hell, free of charge."
"Seriously?"
"Well, it is Hell, after all," the landlady shrugged.
Admittedly, Mayberry could see the draconic logic to the double standard. "Yeah, I guess so. Anyway, I gotta go. See ya."
"Okay, but you watch your ass out there," Tombs cautioned as Mayberry marched into the lot, a warning she learned from experience. "I'd watch it myself, but I've got a new room to rent."
"That was A.U.N.T.I.E., everyone," Mayberry told her class. A twin brother and sister duo escorted their complex, walking brain globe back to their paired desks.
Her students were as animated as she had known them to be. Still, more so today, their eagerness to display their own personal interests and curiosities about their other classmates' was evident in today's Show and Tell.
Mayberry was also satisfied since it provided her an even better way to get to know her pupils' hearts and minds through this time-honored exercise.
"Zipp and Zapp, that was a very nice invention," Mayberry complimented the siblings. "By the way, what does A.U.N.T.I.E. stand for, anyway?"
Zipp looked at her brother, puzzled. "I don't know. What did she stand for?"
Zapp shrugged. "Guess we'll have to ask Mom when we get home."
Disturbed at the implications, Mayberry focused on who was next on her students' list.
"Okay, Roache," called Mayberry from her desk. "You're next."
The chubby, Hellborn boy walked over to her. He gave her a thumb drive from a small pocket, grinning in anticipation of his teacher and classmates' reaction to what was inside it.
Mayberry inserted the device into her classroom desktop computer's USB port. At the same time, she beckoned the rest of the class to gather around so they could see what the boy had brought.
After the drive loaded, the media player displayed the vista of a crowded arena's interior, swaying due to an unsteady hand and the sounds of the overall cheers and more local voices around the digital photographer.
Just below was a wrestling ring, and inside, two colorful female wrestlers circled and rushed each other in acrobatic battle.
"That's my mom," Roche said proudly, pointing to one of the women. "Aboma-Mom!"
The woman in question, a Hellborn whose appearance was a fusion of professional wrestler and 1950's housemother, wore a powder blue singlet, ruffled, white apron, and provincial hair-do.
The kids around Mayberry chattered excitedly at the action building up along with the crowd's rising hurrahs of whichever combatant they favored when she scored a successful attack or counter.
"I didn't know you all liked wrestling," Mayberry said to them.
A girl beside her gave a cheer, "Infernal Championship Wrestling? Hell, yeah!"
"Macey, language," Mayberry cautioned her.
But the girl's outburst only prompted the rest of the class to whoop, "I.C.W.! I.C.W.! I.C.W.!"
"Isn't this a little too violent for all of you?" Mayberry asked, dismayed at their behavior and forgetting what kind of beings she asked. "Haven't you ever watched Charley Choo-Choo and the Alphabet Train?"
"What's that?" an Imp boy close to her asked.
"I heard my mom tell her friend that Daddy's choo-choo went in the wrong tunnel one night," a nearby Imp girl answered innocently.
"Uh...thanks, Sinthia," Mayberry sighed. Imps said the damnedest things. As the children began to call out their favorites like "The Mad Highlanders" and "Battle-rina," Mayberry shook her head.
"What's this underworld coming to?" she muttered.
The answer was given in the form of a new complication given to the distaff warriors in the ring.
Aboma-Mom had just recovered from a vigorous jump kick. She watched her opponent mentally choosing her next plan of attack when the other wrestler straightened her stance into a rictus of confused pain.
A rictus that twisted into a hunch as she doubled over, spasming with spittle flowing from her now growling mouth.
Aboma-Mom backed away amidst the roaring cheers as her rival suddenly grew a third in size and sprouted two thick, grasping tentacles, inexplicably, from her back.
One of the appendages snaked out with surprising speed and batted the blue-clad performer in the face, sending her spinning into a turnbuckle. Although she was trained to handle reasonable amounts of pain, the unexpected blow caught her off-guard, and she slumped into the corner, dazed.
Another tentacle lifted the insensate woman, coiling for a terminal squeeze when the pitch in the crowds' already lusty roar rose again at what they, and the classroom, now saw.
A heavy, black mist poured from the shadowy rafters and scaffolding above, hiding something that dropped through its center. Where the cloud coalesced in the ring, it faded, revealing a figure clad in dark trunks, a mask, and a cloak, placing all of its focus squarely on the wrestler-turned-monstrosity.
"Is that supposed to happen?" Mayberry asked the children, but they ignored her, too caught up in the drama being seen and chanting "Wild Card!"
The once-wrestler dropped her opponent and lashed at the new figure at the first opportunity, forcing the latest entry to dodge as it approached her.
Feinting with one tentacle allowed the creature to snatch the figure by the waist with the other. The first limb then looped around one of the opponent's legs. Then both proceeded to pull away, intending to dismember their prize.
With his ensemble stretching to accommodate, the prize, impossibly, changed into a giant, weighty, steel effigy. One hand gripped the tentacle that held it by the waist with such strength that its claws sank into the rubbery sinew.
With a screech of pain and surprise, the beast dropped the fighter back onto the ring, where he landed in a crouch and sized the target up.
He sprang into a run, confusing the hurt creature with its sudden action. Bounding and climbing up its torso, he reared back a gleaming fist and hammered it into its chest, crashing through ribs and freezing its prize in agony.
Its legs gave out as it crumpled to the ring, its soon-to-be-sightless eyes rolling from the sated crowds, a now-rousing Aboma-Mom, and the metal killer.
The mysterious figure changed back into his dark, masked persona, his fist, a gore-stained gauntlet as proof of his kill.
Mayberry sat numbly in her seat. She would freely admit that she still had things to learn about Hell, but expecting a wrestling match and seeing what amounted to being a snuff film hit her hard.
The sudden, violent kill. The blood pooled beneath the fallen.
All shown on the computer monitor...
Cruel memories suddenly intruded on Mayberry's discipline. The happy, oblivious children around her transformed into the stricken, human faces of her old class on Earth, wrenching her back in time with a viciousness she couldn't defend against.
In her mind's eye, she saw, with morbid clarity, her sudden, murderous lack of self-control, her hand wiping the gore from the monitor of her desktop's webcam at home. Felt the bite of her shame in subjecting her students to it all.
Once again, she tasted her heartbreak, the innocence she had taken, and the misguided bullet that blasted her life, her future, and her salvation away.
The cheers from the wrestling fans and her students suffocated her. The events that led to her death suffocated her.
She jumped to her hooves, anxiety and a rebellious stomach pushing her out of the classroom door as the kids continued their noise.
Deaf and blinded to everything save a need to wretch and clear her head, she needed to get anywhere from this moment, this classroom, those memories.
This Hell.