Chapter 26
At first, nothing happened.
When the two Imps appeared at the Hotel's door, the room went silent. Neither Lucius nor Viola seemed to register to immediate gravity of the situation until both of their eyes had locked onto Lucifer.
What was in fact a single minute seemed to feel like an hour. Time slowed down to a crawl as the realization slowly dawned upon them.
You must understand, dear reader: in Hell's society, Imps were near the bottom rung of the caste system. If the old myths were to be believed, they had been specifically created by Satan as a servile race, meant only to serve the Goetian aristocracy or to work for higher Hellborn races. The mere presence of an individual like Lucifer set off a series of biological instincts in Imps that would often freeze them in place. Even the likes of a Goetian like Stolas (as pitiful as he appeared) was typically enough to make an Imp want to bow their heads, whether they wanted or not.
Chairman Grizelle, of course, rejected this outright. She spent decades teaching Imps like Lucius to hold their heads upright, and to never bow to anyone that had not earned their respect.
All that is to say: it took a moment before Lucius blew a gasket.
Viola, for her part (as was often the case), was stunned speechless.
Wait...there's two of them?!
She knew what Lucifer looked like. She had seen the pictures since the day she was born. She knew the blonde hair, the porcelain skin, the rosy cheeks and his toothy smile.
And yet…
And yet...
Her eyes went between the two: Lucifer and Charlie. Charlie and Lucifer.
She knew they were related. That they were Father and daughter.
It was shocking. The two really took after each other in so many ways. True, Lucifer, didn't have his daughter's stately height, but he had the same gorgeous blonde hair, the same beautiful and delicate porcelain skin, the same charming and merry rosy cheeks...and that beautiful, golden smile.
Charlie, my beloved...my heart wanders. Whatever shall I do?
Lucius took a deep breath, slowly exhaling. He tried to calm his heartbeat.
He had been dreaming of this moment ever since he joined the organization.
He opened his eyes as they glowed in amber fury.
"...You."
It was a word loaded with all of the venom he could muster. All of the rage, the indignity, the hate that he felt for this person.
This monster.
"Huh...so these Imps part of an agency or something?", Lucifer asked Charlie curiously. "Gotta say, those are some spiffy uniforms you guys wear. Kudos to your tailor!"
Smoke began to pour out of Lucius's nostrils...and other things.
"Lu, your nose is bleeding again.", Viola said.
The Imp reached up and touched his face. His hand came away with a trickle of black blood.
He looked back up at Lucifer.
"It's been forty-five years.", he said.
"Wuzzat now?", Lucifer asked.
"I was only 16-years old. I'd been living in the Imp ghetto since I was born. It wasn't much, but it was my home. I had parents, at least for a little while. At least until one of those goddamn Exorcists that you allow down here every year killed them."
He took a step forward.
"And then...it was announced that His Highness had hit upon an idea. A 'brand new innovation in transportation' you called it. Something that would solve the traffic issues of the Hellevator and the Spiral Highway in navigating the rings. A series of pneumatic tubes that could take people from one side of Hell to the other in less than an hour."
The king scratched his chin. "Hmmm...that does sound vaguely familiar."
"There was just one problem.", Lucius continued.
Lucifer sucked in his lower lip. "Yeah...the g-forces would be fucking murder. Probably why it didn't take off, I guess…"
Lucius hissed with fury. His eyes looked like they were going to light themselves on fire.
"You needed room. You needed to clear out the 'slums' so that you could implement your little project. So what did you do? You had your royal guard announce to my neighborhood that we were all being evicted. Me, my friends, my neighbors, everyone. You gave us six months to clear out before the bulldozers came."
He took another tentative step.
"I had nowhere to go. I had no money, I had no job – do you have any idea how hard it was for a young Imp my age to find employment? 'Oh, surely there were assassination jobs?', you might think. 'What about body-guarding? Bouncing? Work at a restaurant?'. I was a fucking child, you son of a bitch. So many of us had had to sell our bodies to afford rent before we were even out of grade school!"
Another step.
"I had only two options: rot in this reeking armpit of a city, or cross the Wasteland. I didn't have any money, so I couldn't take the train. There wasn't even any room to stowaway in the goddamn train! But you know what? All of this bullshit made me realize something. It made me realize that all of this, this whole rotten goddamn system that you, and your fucking Kings of Sin, and your fucking decadent Goetian nobility put in place...it had fucked me over. Me, personally."
Yet another step. He was almost fifteen feet away from Lucifer.
"And then I met someone. The most intelligent, the most kind, the most wonderful woman I had ever met. She inspired me, taught me things, gave me a purpose and a direction that I never got from anyone else here. I wasn't alone, either. It's because of her that we managed to make it to Imp City. She not only organized us, she shepherded us through the Wasteland. We had to leave so many people behind, and so many of ours didn't survive the trip...but we made it…"
He trembled with fury.
"But you know what we discovered when we got there? That even there, far away from your little city, we still were not safe. Even out there, in the city you had set aside for us, we still could not escape the Exorcists. They still came. They still hunted us for sport. The very bastards who took my parents from me would not quit, not even all the way out there. But we persisted. We built, we organized, and we grew in strength. All in spite of you, and Heaven's tyranny. We persisted, in spite of you."
One more step.
"That woman is gone now. I've taken her place. And every day since, her words still ring in my ears. 'Do not let them win', she told me. 'Do not let them forget, and most of all: do not let them go without a fight.' Well, Lucifer, you're here now. You can't run away. You can't ignore me. I've been waiting for this opportunity for over forty years, and now I have it. So tell me…"
He was almost directly in Lucifer's vicinity.
"Where the fuck have you been?! You do all of this damage, cause all of this suffering, abandon your own people, abandon your own daughter…"
He pointed over to Charlie, who for once seemed to be stunned into silence.
"...fuck off to who-knows-where and now you have the unmitigated gall to show your face in public again?! Are you so utterly fucking psychopathic that you have no remorse? For anything? Not even Charlie?!"
"SILENCE!"
The entire Hotel shook with the sound of Lucifer's voice. Every single thing within earshot went silent.
The King's eyes were now a bloody, fiery red. Horns protruded from his brow that dwarfed any of the Imps by a considerable length.
"You will hold your tongue, Imp. I have made my share of mistakes, and to that I will gladly admit to you, and any other being in creation. But you will not question the devotion that I have to my daughter. Is that clear?"
Lucius grinned a venomous grin. "Ah, there it was. No more of the fake joviality. We all get to see the real you. This is the man who robbed my people of their homes, and segregated us into an over-crowded, violence-ridden, concrete hellscape-"
"It wasn't my idea!", Lucifer screamed at him.
For once, Lucius had nothing to say in response.
"It wasn't…"
The horns receded back into the king's head. His eyes slowly returned to normal.
He took a shaky breath.
"It wasn't my idea. I didn't want to just...tear you guys away from your homes and dump you there. Satan had told me that you guys needed a place for yourselves, where you could run your own affairs because the strife between Hellborn and Sinners was getting too difficult to contain. I though it was a great idea! I even had the train built so you guys could go from one city to another whenever you wanted, but…"
He reached up and removed his hat.
"...but there was still too many for one train to handle. So I had the idea for the tubes, because I figured it would be faster but...even Lilith told me it couldn't work. But I was so fucking full of myself that…"
He swallowed. The king of Hell and all of its realms looked like he was going to burst into tears.
"I have so many regrets. More than I could ever make up for, even with eternity. I don't blame you for hating me. For blaming me for everything wrong with this place, because you're right. I fucked up, in so many ways that I can even count them. I don't think there are enough digits in all of creation that could contain the number of mistakes I've made."
He slowly replaced his hat on his head.
"And you're right. I abandoned you. All of you, including my little girl. The entire situation is so fucked that I don't think even I can fix it. I tried to put a good system in place and...well, you see the results right?"
He kneeled down on one knee, trying to get to eye level with the Imp.
"But I'm here now. I don't ask you to forgive me, or even like me. I only ask that you don't make me seem worse in my daughter's eyes than I already am."
Lucius said nothing.
For the first time in his life, he saw Lucifer for who he truly was: a sad old man filled with nothing but self-hatred and bitter regret.
The whole experience made him feel hollow inside.
It wasn't one he would have to think about for long.
Boom boom boom
The entire scene was cruelly cut short by the loud pounding on the front door.
"Sssanctuary, you imbecilsss! Ssssanctuary!"
"Miss Ong, I'd like you meet an old friend of mine: Monsieur Gluton. Monsieur Gluton, this is my good friend miss Chay Ong."
"Bonjour, Madame Ong.", the fleshy stalk said in response. "C'est un plaisir."
"He said it's a pleasure, Miss Ong.", Alastor responded.
Chay rolled her eyes.
"Le plaisir est tout pour moi.", Chay answered in perfect french. "Je parle francais."
The Radio Demon raised an eyebrow. "You clever girl, you."
"French was one of the official languages of my country for over a century, Alastor.", she answered in kind. "I was going to pick it up one way or another, if only to root out the bourgeois."
"Hmm, and here I was thinking I was going to impress you."
"How sad for you.", she said as she shook her head. "So how exactly can your friend here help us?"
"Quite simple, really.", he said. "Monsieur Gluton here disposes much of the garbage in the Pride ring. If it has been junked or trashed, there's a 75% it's made it's way into our friend here's stomach."
Chay looked down at Gluton's cavernous jittering maw.
"Yikes."
"Oh, quite the opposite!", Alastor answered cheerily. "Lucifer specifically gave him this job! Our poor friend here went through his short life entirely on the verge of starvation, so it was really only fitting that this would be his function."
"….Hmm.", Chay answered. "I kind of sympathize. I went hungry quite a lot in my life."
"Oh, I'm sure you were. But in this case our friend here was born with a rather nasty hereditary defect that left him with malformed appetite. Raw meat, apple cores, garbage, butcher's scraps, a corprse or two...dozen...there was even a rumor he ate a six-month old child! He didn't, of course, but…"
"So why didn't he end up in the Cannibal Colony?"
"He did!", Alastor answered. "He nearly depleted the entire city! That's why Lucifer put him down here!"
"...Huh."
"But enough about that. The point is: Monsieur Gluton has been down here for so long that he not only takes in much of our refuse, he can also point out exactly where it came from! You see what I'm suggesting, yes?"
She scratched at her non-existant nose.
"Oh! Almost forgot!", Alastor exclaimed as he reached into his jacket pocket.
He pulled out some oysters still in their shell. "Mon cadeau pour toi, mon ami!"
He threw them down into Gluton's gullet, clicking and clacking against the spinning walls of his teeth.
The meat stalk shivered with delight.
"Ah, c'est magnifique." it said, almost orgasmic. "Maintenant, que puis-je fair pour vous?"
Alastor motioned towards Chay. "Well, my dear. You have the floor."
Chay nodded, and began her story.
Now, dear reader, those who speak second languages may be fluent in them, and with time even be able to speak them normally, but it is also true that languages often have different grammatical philosophies and structures that hinder the speaker. One who has been raised speaking predominantly one language, only to then take up another somewhere else down the line, has to be careful not to step over one's own proverbial toes. In effect: one must firs think of what they want to say, mentally translate it into the language they are preparing to speak, sentence by sentence before actually vocalizing.
Chay may have been fluent to a degree, but it still took her some thirty minutes to fully get it out. Gluton did not object, however, and listened carefully and dutifully.
After she was done, Chay exhaled as if exhausted. It had been quite a long time since she had needed to speak french in such detail.
The meat stalk took another puff on his cigarette.
"J'ai reçu de nombreux cadavres de diablotins récemment.", Gluton replied. "Des cadavres et des on, dont beaucoup a moite pourris."
That got Chay's attention.
Bones and half-rotten corpses? Is he referring to the creeches?
She asked him if they contained any metal, like the shards.
"Oui.", he answered. "Mais c'etait plus tard. On me jettes diablotins depuis des mois."
She asked him from where these corpses were coming from.
"Deux endroits.", he answered solemly. "Beaucoup viennent du desert, et d'autres d'ici."
Two places. Many from the desert, and others from here.
"Alastor.", she asked. "Does anyone else know about this place?"
"Not that I'm aware of.", the Radio Demon replied. "I only found Gluton by accident several years ago. He hadn't spoken to anyone in centuries when I found him. I only realized who he was by his reputation."
-Fascinating.
She asked Gluton if he saw who it was that was dumping the Imp corpses from the catwalk.
"Je ne vois rien, Madam.", he replied.
Of course, he couldn't see. The 'man' was clearly all mouth.
"Mais je les ai entendus parler.", he continued. "Ils s'adressaient l'un a l'autre assez souvent."
She looked over at Alastor. He nodded his head in response.
She asked Gluton if she heard their names.
"Il y en avait deux.", he replied. There were only two.
"Ils s'appielient eux-memes Monsieur Bodfish et Monsieur Flynn."
CHAPTER 26 END
