[excerpt from Mystics in Hell]

 

The Colossus of Hell

by Joe Bonadonna

 

“The danger of the past was that men became slaves. The danger of the future is that man may become robots.” — Erich Fromm

 

Who am I? What’s my name? What the hell did I do to end up here?

Eternal questions that for this lost soul shall remain forever unanswered.

“Here he comes — the Man with the Tangerine Tan!”

Laughter and ridicule dog his heels like the Hounds of Hell on the hunt. The sidewalk is riddled with pools of vomit that bubble and hiss, forcing him to sidestep each one as he schleps his way down Gorgon Street, a minor thoroughfare of Port Boil, far beyond the limits of New Hell City. Rivulets of puss and urine course along the curbside, emptying into sewers and storm drains emitting noxious odors that sting his nose and burn his eyes.

“Look out! It’s the Bleached Bastard!”

“The Ginger Troll walks among us!”

Fucking intellectual libtard!

“Hey, don’t insult him. You know he likes to be called the Orange Ogre.”

Laughter and insults hurl at him from the mouths of the damned that follow him through the mud, filth and refuse clogging the streets of Port Boil.

“If he touches you, it’s the Mortuary for sure!”

“The Orange Ogre will get you if you don’t watch out!”

“Get the fuck out of my way!” Ogre growls at a plague victim covered in warts and carbuncles crawling over his body like some new form of insect life. He gives the infected soul a shove, causing him to slip on the curb and step into a thick puddle of industrial waste that melts the damned fool’s necroflesh and sends him off to the Mortuary.

“See what I mean?”

But few pay attention to what has just occurred. The dead and the damned are inured to such commonplace sights.

“Mates, he’s just another cockwobbling turd!”

More taunts, more laughter and more ridicule hound Ogre as he shambles down the sidewalk. If there’s one thing he truly hates it’s being mocked and humiliated. On the other hand, he hates to be ignored, too. His Afterlife seems to be an infernal commentary on the life he once led, whatever that was.

Shoving aside any soul who gets in his way, he hops monkeylike over a pool of steaming bile wherein float scorpions, dung beetles and the swollen and rotting bodies of kronofrogs. He coughs and chokes on the sickening miasma that fills the air with the reek of brimstone, sulfur and feces.

Port Boil was a mess. Although the flooding had begun to recede there were still plenty of lost souls infected with the contagions that had not yet been eradicated. No vaccine, no inoculation had any effect on Erra’s plagues; they must simply run their course. Plague Zombies roamed the streets and alleys, falling apart like sandcastles and fading away, only to pop up again in the Mortuary to suffer hell’s version of resurrection: Reassignment.

Ogre trembled at the memory of his most recent stay as a guest of the Mortuary. Three times since his fall into hell he had crossed the wrong rogue, pirate or lawyer and had paid the price by ending up on Slab A at the mercy, or lack thereof, of the Undertaker and his Deputy Assistant, Gorgonous. He wished those memories would fade into oblivion like all the memories of who he once was before his immortal soul was consigned to eternal damnation.

Turning the corner to head down Basilisk Boulevard, the Orange Ogre shuffled along, his hairy knuckles dragging the ground.

Half-drowned buildings leaned over streets and sidewalks piled with waste and refuse. Ogre witnessed torment and suffering on every corner of that boulevard of hopeless dreams. Devils had their way with poor damned souls, sodomizing them with red-hot pokers and cattle prods, torturing them with flaming whips, flailing knives and a variety of tools, weapons and devices that would have made Torquemada giggle with pleasure. Agonized cries and pitiful pleas for help and mercy echoed down the boulevard. But the hellizens, whether infected or not, paid no attention and continued on their dismal way. Every lost soul knew better than to interfere with a devil and its victim.

“Deja paso al hombre olvidado — make way for the man who has no memory!” shouted a small Mexican cowboy.

“Go back to your shithole, fucktard!” Ogre lashed out with one hairy fist and knocked the man down. He left the caballero lying in a puddle of sickly-green mud crawling with maggots and vipers.

It was true, however, what the cowboy had said. The Orange Ogre had no memory of who he was and who he’d been in life.

But Satan knew. Oh, yes, Satan knew.

In life, the Orange Ogre had been a bully, full of bluster and braggadocio, when in truth he was nothing more than a craven coward. Never had he gotten his hands dirty, but they were nonetheless washed in the blood of others. Once he’d been a wealthy but shady business tycoon who had no friends, often cheated his partners, took credit for the success of others and blamed everyone else for his failures. He was a misogynist, a pedophile, an unbalanced huckster, an adulterer and a narcissistic, psychopathic liar. He conned a nation, betrayed its allies and embraced its greatest foes — all for the sake of his vanity, ego and money. Petty and vindictive, arrogant and insensitive, he tumbled into hell because he’d broken more of the 613 commandments than anyone else who had ever lived. If a contest were to be held to select the worst sinner in human history, Ogre would take first prize. He committed sins that would even shame Satan.

In hell, however, Ogre was just another soul doomed to an eternity of torment and punishment, a mere footnote in the netherworld. Surprisingly enough, he had grown a bigger set of balls in hell and was no longer the coward he’d been in life. Perhaps this was because being dead, he no longer feared dying, although he tried and often failed to avoid the Undertaker’s cold table. Three trips to the Mortuary were three trips too many. Nothing of his former life remained to him, not even his own name.

How many wives and mistresses did I have? Was I powerful and important? Did I have children? Was I loved and respected? Or was I feared and hated?

All memory and knowledge of his life had been erased from the chalkboard of his mind.

Throughout all the circles and levels, nooks and crannies and corners of hell, no one knew his name or who he had once been. There was no record of his past life; there was no DNA database or blood tests, no fingerprints or retina scans that might reveal his true identity. And all that, too, was part of his eternal punishment . . . the loss of his identity.

“Hey, Ogre boy!” a black woman wearing the uniform of a Marine officer shouted at him from across the street. “It ain’t such a wonderful afterlife, is it?”

Every wayward soul Ogre passed on the street laughed at him. Although he saw many grotesqueries and deformities among the denizens of hell, no one laughed at them. They laughed only at him. And that, too, was part of his eternal punishment: the constant assaults on his pride.

“Eat shit and die, you lowlife dog!” he yelled back at the Marine.

The woman laughed as she continued on her way, reminding him once again that his entire afterlife was a futile quest to regain the memories that had been taken from him. For him, hell was an infernal version of It’s A Wonderful Life. But Ogre’s afterlife was a twisted reboot of the scene where the character of George Bailey gets his wish — that he’d never been born. For all intents and purposes, the Orange Ogre was a man who had never been born, but a man who had sinned and died, nevertheless.

Without further incident he continued on his way, thinking of the fortune that awaited him. Having made enough money in hell from questionable business deals, he now wanted what money could often buy: revenge.

“Brother, can you spare a diablo?”

Ogre stopped in his tracks, accosted by a legless Asian war veteran strapped to a wooden cart and using his hands to propel him forward along the sidewalk. The beggar was a mess of open sores, scaly skin and puss-filled eyes.

Another asshole infected with the plague! “Suck ass, chopstick dick!” Ogre kicked the legless Asian’s cart and sent him rolling down the sidewalk, where he bounced off the curb and into the street, only to be crushed beneath the wheels of a waste-distribution truck.

Crossing Behemoth Avenue and turning down Judas Drive on the way to his final destination, Ogre paused in front of a Spawn Shop. There, in the black glass of its front window, he cringed at his reflection.

The color of Ogre’s skin was as orange as the fruit itself, his eyes as bright as those of someone infected with hepatitis. On top of it all, his body boasted a rash of boils, carbuncles and pustules. He wore a green suit, brown shirt and plaid tie from Baalmart, and an old pair of golf shoes Gorgonous had nailed to his feet on his first trip to the Mortuary. Clothes may make the damned, but they could not conceal the fact that he was among the infected. To top it all off, the Undertaker had shaved his head clean of his long, unruly white hair. Upon his second sojourn to Slab A his flat, flabby ass had been removed. An unusually sympathetic Gorgonous then slipped him a bottle of VileAgra, so he could go home and masturbate. But after taking the first and only pill, Ogre’s dick fell off and was gobbled up by a hellrat. Then, on his third trip to hell’s mansion of mayhem, the Undertaker removed his tiny hands and replaced them with those belonging to an orangutan.

Rounding the corner of Belial Way and heading down Libertine Lane, the Orange Ogre heard a voice cry out: “Hey, fellas! It’s that jagbag jerkwad who cheated us!”

I’ll sue that bastard for public slander! Ogre promised himself.

He spun around and saw a trio of bully boys he recognized right off the bat: three hellions he once cheated out of a lucrative real estate deal in Hellywood, before the coming of the floods. Carrying switchblades, wrenches, chains and baseball bats wrapped with barbed wire, the hellions looked like they had stepped right out of a 1960s’ era motorcycle gang movie.

“Let’s dust the son of a bitch!”

“Yeah, a nice little stay at the Mortuary will do him good.”

While he may have grown a bigger set of balls in hell, the Orange Ogre made it a habit of intimidating only those who were alone and much smaller than himself. Now there were three angry souls facing him, each one taller and more menacing than the last. Without giving it a second thought, Ogre turned and ran away across the street, down Dead Man’s Curve and into Crud Alley, which proved to be a poor choice, for the alley was a dead end.

There was no escape. He was trapped.

“I’m gonna rip this piss-loving cocksucker’s head off!”

And with that, in an instant, the trio was upon the Orange Ogre. They beat him and clubbed him and knocked him to the slimy ground of the alley. They cut him and stabbed him and even tried to bugger him with their baseball bats.

Ogre cried out in agony, called out for help. But nobody listened. Nobody cared.

*

The infernal Prometheus, that’s who I am, Doctor Victor Frankenstein tells himself.

Damned to hell for daring to emulate the Almighty by creating life from the spare parts of dead bodies, Victor adjusts his blue stocking cap to make sure it sat snugly in place upon his great head. The cap conceals the chicken wire that Gorgonous, assistant to the notorious Undertaker in hell’s Mortuary, had used to replace the top of his skull, leaving his brain free for everyone to see. But this isn’t Victor’s head nor his own body, for his brain is encased in the skull of Adam, the monster he built out of cadavers and had successfully brought to life. As for Adam, Victor’s unholy misbegotten son . . . his brain resides in the head of the infamous doctor.

Victor inhales smoke from a Sulfarillo, then exhales slowly, blowing smoke rings into the air. He sits on the stoop outside his home, thinking and watching. He feels safe for now in Goblin Manor, which perches high atop the Golem Heights on the outskirts of New Hell City, overlooking the swollen waters of the Vile River. Be that as it may, he knows only too well that safety in hell is a fleeting thing. While all is quiet now on the infernal front, massive flooding can strike again without warning. A dozen new strains of Erra’s plagues can morph into two dozen more. And the Flux, disrupting the whole fabric of infernity, still persists in tearing apart the hellscape, destroying landmasses here and creating new ones there.

All along the riverfront of Port Boil below, Victor spies the damned rushing about. Some sail away on boats towards new coastlines that emerged as floodwaters receded. Other hellions seek shelter in dried-up sewers, hoping against hope to escape Erra’s plagues. Lost and mystified souls search in vain for missing friends and loved ones separated from them during the disasters. Others search for a way out of hell. Displaced souls wander about the streets, lost and alone, having been shunted to a hell where they knew no one. Forever tormented by the consequences of his actions in life, Doctor Frankenstein strives to atone for his sins and his crimes by helping those who come begging his aid, but he cannot help them all.

As for himself, Victor has survived it all, by whatever luck or grace may exist in hell. He weathered the Flux and the flooding, remained free of contagion, and thus far has escaped the Purging. But he cannot escape the nightmares that haunt him.

By hell — what have I done that is not of my own making? I truly deserve to be among the restless and eternally damned.

Visions from his dreams dance in his head, even now, as he sits there wide awake. They cavort like drunken demons. Snapshots of memories from his former life spark and fade in his brain. Memories of his mother’s death by Scarlet Fever plague him still, her death having caused him to bury himself in his experiments to help him deal with his grief. More visions . . . of Henry Clerval, his childhood friend, strangled by the monster he created; of his younger brother William, also murdered by the Creature; of Justine Moritz, his brother’s nanny, who was framed by the Creature and wrongly hanged for Willy’s murder; of his father, who died shortly after the horrible death of Victor’s wife, Elizabeth. Moving pictures of Victor’s final moments in life haunt him still: the face of Captain Walton, who rescued him and took him aboard his ship at the North Pole after he collapsed from exhaustion and hyperthermia while hunting for the Creature. Victor has never forgotten his last words to the ship’s captain . . . “to seek happiness in tranquility and avoid ambition.”

But where is my brother Ernest? What became of him?

And then there is Elizabeth, his beloved Elizabeth, strangled by the Creature on the night following her marriage to Victor. If any of them exist somewhere in hell, Victor has never been able to find them. And perhaps that, too, is part of his eternal punishment.

These hands . . . these hands killed them all just as surely as if I had committed the crimes myself. But these are not my hands, not the hands of my own body. These are the hands of a corpse, of a dead man I brought back to life — the Creature whose body I now inhabit as my self-imposed penance for the evil I brought into the world an eternity ago.

As for Adam, with whom he made peace in hell ages ago . . . Would that we could be together through this hellishly trying time. But I fear flood and Flux may have displaced him and his inamorata, Galatea.

Heaving a sigh of longing and regret, Victor rose to his feet, brushed dust and lint from his denim coveralls and glanced at the crimson vault hanging high over New Hell, with the Light of Paradise gleaming and glowing, taunting and teasing the damned with the promise of a heaven that can never be attained.

Then he saw them, gliding across the blood-red skies on invisible wings — Erra, the Babylonian god of plague and mayhem, and his Seven Sibitti warriors. Majestic, beautiful and terrible to behold, they swept across the sky: Erra, the wrath of eternity, and his seven champions, come to deliver punishment as they see fit, where injustice has been unfairly distributed, for hell is still under audit from on high. Dreadful in their dusty raiment, they wore cloaks of human skin decorated with braided scalps. Their swords dangled from belts fashioned out of human entrails. Pouches made of scrota hung from those same, grisly belts.

In the distance, hellizens of Port Boil screamed and ran for shelter against Erra and his seven personified weapons. The Sibitti shimmered in their dusty cowls, eyes aglow and swords at hand.

From a pocket, Victor pulled the spyglass he used aboard the Snark when he and his companions had sailed hell’s oceans in search of the Isle of the Damned. Thus, he watched what was taking place on the streets of Port Boil and the outer limits of New Hell City.

Plague Zombies, infected souls and Old and New Dead still free of the contagion — all fled in terror from the wrath and punishments of those merciless warriors sent from Above to audit hell and punish all. In some places, the streets and sidewalks cracked wide open and damned fools tumbled into unknown depths. Ice froze others, who fell and shattered like shards from a broken mirror. Lost souls dissolved into sand, while holy fire turned others into black ash. Lightning blasted untold numbers of the eternally condemned. A juggernaut of sharpened steel blades and razors rolled through the streets, butchering hundreds of hellions who tried in vain to escape. A rainstorm from the crimson vault above caused great flooding, washing streets and sidewalks clean.

And then they were gone, Erra and his Seven Sibitti, gone as quickly as they had come, on invisible wings that stirred the wind and sent debris flying in all directions.

Glad that it was all over and having witnessed more than enough to last several endless seasons in hell, Victor stashed the spyglass in his pocked, turned quickly and went back inside Goblin Manor, closing the door quietly behind him lest the sound of it attract Erra’s attention, causing that wrathful deity and his bloody brood to return for him. But he suspected that Erra knew exactly where he lived and what experiments he conducted, just as Satan knew. But why have they not bothered me? Perhaps Satan did indeed protect his favorites, as Napoleon himself once explained to Victor.

Walking into the elegant Victorian Era parlor, Victor saw his friend and assistant, Quasimodo, still entertaining his new-found love, Madame Marie Lenormand, who was once a famous French cartomancer, a reader of Tophet Cards.

A petty fortune teller, Victor told himself, a note of disdain and disgust in his mental voice. Poor Quasimodo, forever pining away for his lost Esmeralda. Is she in New Hell or did she find salvation and attain heaven? Just as he had searched in vain for his beloved Elizabeth and his family, Victor knew that the Hunchback of Notre Dame had searched long and hard for his lost Gypsy girl, for whom he murdered the priest who lusted after her.

Victor listened while Madame Lenormand read her cards and told the hapless hunchback’s fortune. Quasimodo sat across from her at a small table set in the middle of the parlor, mooning and cooing over her. She was beautiful, to be sure, dressed in a crimson gown that reminded him of the vault hanging over hell.

What he found most fascinating was that Quasimodo had forsaken the wearing of one of his silly costumes in favor of a nicely-tailored black tuxedo, complete with top hat and tails.

Idiot! King of Fools, indeed! Victor thought, shaking his head in disgust. But Quasimodo was enamored of the woman and could not be faulted for such feelings.

“The Purges, floods, plagues and Flux will soon pass,” Madame Lenormand told Quasimodo as she turned her Tophet Cards over, one at a time, to read their message.

Victor stifled a laugh. He believed in no such parlor games as palmistry, rhabdomancy and reading the tea leaves at the bottom of a cup. An eternity ago he briefly met the mystic when she managed to crash a party at the Hellview Golf and Country Club. In life, she was powerful and charismatic enough to worry Napoleon. Thus he had her tossed out on her ass upon her arrival at the club, for he had always believed her to be a fake and a spy.

“Fortune and fame await you, ma chérie,” the fortune teller intoned. “Hell is only a beginning, not the ultimate ending.”

Victor bit his tongue lest he call the woman out for being the dangerous charlatan he believed her to be, as Napoleon himself had always believed.

“What more? What more can you see?” Quasimodo asked eagerly, almost drooling over the red-haired, green-eyed beauty.

She winked at the hunchback and set down another card.

Victor’s stomach lurched. Disgusting!

Born Marie Anne Adelaide Lenormand in 1768, by 1790 she was already a celebrated teller of fortunes. She predicted to the unfortunate Princess de Lamballe her horrible death at the hands of an infuriated populace. Robespierre and other leaders of the French Revolution consulted with Lenormand, and even Czar Alexander begged for her services. Empress Josephine also put great faith in Lenormand’s predictions. Unfortunately for the sibyl, she did not content herself with telling Josephine’s fortune but instead ventured to predict a future, replete with influences, to the Emperor himself. This was why Napoleon loathed and distrusted Lenormand. Nevertheless, she died a wealthy woman at a ripe old age. Napoleon divorced Josephine and married Marie-Louise of Austria, who had left Purgatory to remain in hell with him. As for Lenormand, upon her arrival in New Hell City, she immediately resumed her former trade but barely managed to keep her head above water.

What need have the damned to have their fortunes told? Victor wondered.

“I see that soon you will find true love and happiness, dearest Quasimodo,” Lenormand said after studying her cards for a time.

The hunchback smiled lovingly at her, took one of her hands and kissed it.

Gag me with a pitchfork! Victor said to himself.

“So, my future . . . is it bright?” Quasimodo asked hopefully.

Lenormand nodded. “Oui, mon petit kumquat. Your future is so bright you will be forced to wear the Faustus-Rant sunglasses.”

Victor had seen and heard enough. “You have no future, you humpbacked little whale!”

Quasimodo took no offense, knowing how quickly the mercurial Frankenstein’s moods could change. “Our future is eternal, my friend. C’est la vie, as we French would say.”

“Such is life?” Victor raved. “We’re dead, you imbecile!”

“Dead we may be, but still I have plans.”

Victor sighed; his friend was such a hopeless romantic. “You still wish to find and ring Hell’s Bells with the hope of learning the location of the Get Out of Hell Free Card?”

Quasimodo puffed himself up with pride. “Yes. Indeed I do. Am I not the greatest and most athletic bell ringer who has ever lived and died?”

“Without a doubt, Quasimodo. But there is no such card. It’s all myth, legend and lies upon lies. Don’t waste your time.”

“Time in hell is all I have, Victor my friend. I have an eternity of it.”

Madame Lenormand coughed to clear her throat. “I hate to interrupt this philosophical discussion, Quasimodo, but we really must be going.” She hastily gathered up her Tophet Cards and rose to her feet.

Victor ignored her and addressed Quasimodo directly. “Where are you going?”

“To Hell’s Kitchen,” Quasimodo told him. “We have the reservation.”

Clenching his fists in barely-controlled anger, Victor said, “Well, return by five, Quasimodo. Mister Turing will be here tonight with our test subject and we must prepare for the work that lies ahead of us.”

Lenormand shot Quasimodo a look, one eyebrow slightly raised. The hunchback blushed and lowered his gaze.

“Yes, master,” he said to Victor, rising from his chair. He and Lenormand then turned and left without bothering to say goodbye.

“How utterly rude of them!” Victor said as he headed toward his laboratory, stopping briefly to stare at himself in the dirty, full-length mirror hanging on one wall.

The Creature whose body he had constructed, given life to and now inhabited stood about eight feet in height and was proportionally large. Despite Victor’s intentions, the beautiful creation of his dreams had turned out to be hideous, with watery white eyes and skin that barely concealed the muscle tissue and blood vessels underneath. However, he was no longer repulsed by his reflection, although the stocking cap looked ridiculous. I really must find another hat. With a smile, he removed a handkerchief from a pocket and polished the bolts on either side of his neck. After all, company was coming.

*

Through the grimy glass windows of Nick’s Czar and Grill, located near the intersection of Basilisk Boulevard and Judas Drive in downtown Port Boil, the patrons inside watch the Prophets of Doom proclaim the fall of Satan and the rise of Erra and his Seven Sibitti as the New Lords of Hell. Damned souls carry signs that read Raise Hell, Not Hope and Repent? It’s Too Late to Repent. Others chant slogans such as To Hell with Everything and Make Hell Hate Again. The noise and commotion are almost unendurable, but the customers of the Russian tearoom are accustomed to such madness. This is hell, after all.

Pouring himself a cup of Charnomile tea, Grigori Yefimovich Rasputin, the Russian mystic and self-proclaimed holy man, studies the room and the patrons around him, and then stares out the window, ignoring the companion sitting at the table across from him. A pair of tormented lovers stroll down the other side of Basilisk Boulevard when the man abruptly dissolves into sand. The woman screams hysterically and runs down the street, seeking shelter lest she, too, be purged. A Plague Zombie brushes up against the window of the tearoom, smearing it with his melting necroflesh as he moves on.

Rasputin clutched the leather thong hanging around his neck, which was attached to an unholy talisman concealed beneath his Siberian peasant’s shirt. More victims of plagues. Not even I, who once healed Czar Nicholas’ hemophiliac son, can help such afflicted ones.

Once upon an eternity ago, Rasputin had been a member of the Czar’s court and a favorite of his wife, Alexandra. He wielded great power and influence over the Czar and Czarina and was seen by many to be a visionary and a prophet. But as Russian defeats in World War I mounted, he, Nicholas, and Alexandra grew increasingly unpopular. Involved in a paradigm of political struggle, Rasputin was accused of various misdeeds, from an unrestricted sexual life to political domination over the royal family. Nobles in influential circles around the Romanovs clamored for Rasputin’s removal from the royal court. A peasant woman even attempted to assassinate him by stabbing him in the stomach outside his home. Then on December 30, 1916, at the Moika Palace of Prince Felixovich Yusupov, he was fed tea, cakes and wine laced with cyanide. When that failed to kill Rasputin he was beaten and shot three times, once in the forehead. Two days later a pair of workmen retrieved his body from the half-frozen waters of the Malaya Nevka River; it appeared as if Rasputin had tried to claw his way out of the ice. It was later determined that he died of drowning.

The door swung open and Madame Marie Lenormand sashayed into the tearoom, ordered a cup of Cadavender tea and promptly sat down across from Rasputin and next to his companion.

She nodded to Rasputin and then kissed his companion on the cheek. “Bon après-midi, ma chérie, Joey,” she told him.

The man grunted and toyed with his cup of Jasmented tea. “Where have you been all afternoon?” he asked in a slight, Italian accent.

“That circus freak Quasimodo insisted on buying me lunch at Hell’s Kitchen,” Lenormand replied. “The food, of course, was most horrendous.”

Rasputin turned from the window and stared at the French teller of fortunes. “What more did you learn from our little friend? Is true?” he asked, speaking with a Russian accent.

“Yes, Grigori. It’s all true.”

“Robots, indeed! Ridicolo!” said the Italian.

“Cyborgs, dear Joey. Cyborgs,” Lenormand explained. “But it’s a waste of time trying to borrow money from Frankenstein. He’s as destitute as we are. Quasimodo told me that Howard Carter can no longer afford to finance the doctor’s experiments.”

“Bah!” Rasputin said, a note of frustration in his voice. “I still not understand. The Devil, he knows all that happens in his realm. Why does he not put end to Doctor Frankenstein and his attempts to build creature with both organic and bio-mechatronic body parts?”

“Perhaps His Satanic Majesty no want to,” said the Italian.

“What do you mean, Joey?” asked Lenormand.

The man she referred to as “Joey” was none other than Giuseppe Balsamo, alias Count Alessandro di Cagliostro — the Cagliostro, once dubbed the Prince of Quacks. In life, he’d been an adventurer and self-appointed magician who was welcomed at the royal courts of 18^th century Europe, where he pursued psychic healing, alchemy and scrying. He also claimed to have studied the Kabbalah and the Dark Arts. His personal history was veiled in rumor, propaganda and mysticism. He had a religious education, was expelled from the Catholic Order of Saint John and then became a pharmacist on the isle of Malta. Later he married seventeen-year-old Loreza Seraphina Felciani and forced her into having a sexual affair with a forger and swindler in exchange for being “shown the ropes” in all kinds of illicit activities. A charlatan and imposter, one of his critics called him; Cagliostro was a man of amoral values.

While on a visit to Rome, Cagliostro met two people who proved to be spies of the Inquisition. Some accounts hold that his wife had betrayed him. He was soon arrested and sentenced to death on the charge of being a Freemason. His sentence was later changed to life imprisonment and he died at the Fortress of San Leo in 1795.

Now he sat in Nick’s Czar and Grill, a chubby little man with a high forehead and graying hair, smartly dressed in a black Crooks Brothers’ suit that had seen better days. He pursed his lips and nodded at Lenormand.

“Mi scusi, signora,” he said. “What I mean is, perhaps Satan does not want to stop Doctor Frankenstein. Maybe the Devil finds some amusement in the antics of the mad doctor and his hunchbacked little gnome.”

“What about Erra?” Lenormand asked.

“That bastardo of Babylon knows what Frankenstein does. Of this, I am certain.”

“Then why does Erra not stop him?”

“Perhaps Erra, too, is amused by Doctor Frankenstein and his little clown, Quasimodo, who has eyes only for you, Marie.”

“Eat cake and die!” Lenormand said with a laugh. “He’s just another paying customer. And a good one, too. Can I help it if he has a big mouth and a small hard-on for me?”

“You are not one to put away old habits, are you, Signora?”

“Old habits are difficult to break, my dear Count — especially when there’s a good chance of financial reward.”

Rasputin sat there, quietly listening to Lenormand and Cagliostro talk about their afterlives, the floods, the plagues, the purges and the Flux. But his mind was on other things.

After an endless tenure of trying to persuade, cajole, con, bribe and threaten their way through the ever-shifting maze that is hell, he and Cagliostro decided that leading a simple Afterlife was the best course to traverse. They now wanted nothing more than to own a humble establishment, a lodge and gathering place for all the mystics, prophets, magicians, fortune tellers and psychics in hell.

The Infernium Club was the name they had chosen for their establishment.

Trouble was, as it was in Life so it is in the Afterlife, starting and operating such an organization required money, and they were all but destitute. With hardly a diablo to split between them, what they needed was a financier, a wealthy patron, a silent partner. In short, they needed seed money for their start-up venture. This was all Rasputin and Cagliostro wanted: wealth and a place of their own, a place to call home. As for Lenormand, while she managed to eke out a peasant’s income, she was hungry for more. She was out for whatever and as much as she could get.

Rasputin decided to rejoin the conversation. “If Satan know all and see all, then why he not lock us in cages and torture us until end of time?”

Cagliostro nodded. “This is, I tell you, not the hell I was told of in my childhood.”

“Da,” said Rasputin. “And if Erra is so much powerful, then why not he destroy Satan, conquer hell and rule like czar?”

“The ways of gods and monsters . . . they are truly mysterious, mio amico,” Cagliostro told him.

“Do you think Satan truly cares about what we do in hell?” Lenormand asked.

“I am certain he does,” said Cagliostro. “He knows, too, that much of what we do often amounts to no more than a plate of meatballs.”

Rasputin slurped his tea and wiped his mouth on a sleeve. “Perhaps we are but peasants and pawns in game where only they know rules.”

“There is but one rule in hell,” said Cagliostro. “And that is, there are no rules.”

“And that is beetle in borscht,” Rasputin said.

“But we abide by our own rules, do we not, Grigori?” Cagliostro asked.

“Is truth, tovarisch.”

“And what are your rules for continued existence in hell?” Lenormand asked.

“To keep low profile and avoid Reassignment,” Rasputin told her. “Even though there is no true death in hell, still we fear it. We mourn passing of friends who must go to be reassigned. A most unfortunate thing. It is difficult for us to shed old habits and emotions.”

Lenormand sat back in her chair. “What about hopes and dreams?”

“We all know in hell there is no hope,” said Cagliostro. “It is senseless to have big dreams. Such things, they are . . . how you say? Exercises in futility.”

“This very true,” Rasputin agreed, having learned long ago that there is no hope for the hopeless, no dreams. Only nightmares.

“Yet still we hope, still we dream,” said Lenormand.

“Hell is big paradox. All we want is money to live like czars of old Mother Russia.”

Cagliostro reached for and kissed Lenormand’s hand. “And that is why, la mia bella donna, we came seeking your help. Your ambitions are much like our own. We thought you could help extort or borrow money from Frankenstein and his little stronzo of an assistant.”

“Blood cannot be squeezed from turnip,” said Rasputin.

“Is there no wealthy aristocrat you know who you can hypnotize into giving us money?” Cagliostro asked the Siberian peasant.

“Nyet. Plague, pestilence, flood have reduced all to status of peasants.” The Mad Monk barked a laugh and told Cagliostro, “Hypnosis not always work in such a way. Perhaps your own skills work better.”

“Perhaps,” Cagliostro said thoughtfully.

“I’m very sorry I could not help you, my friends,” Lenormand said.

Cagliostro kissed Marie’s hand again. “Il mio amore, do not worry. We shall think of something and you will be part of it.”

“Oh, Joey,” she said. “Your soul may be damned but it is nonetheless sweet.”

Rasputin ignored the Italian con artist and the French fortune teller to pursue the path of his own thoughts. He knew there had to be someone in hell who had managed to hang onto their fortune. Someone slick, clever and cunning. A con artist much like Cagliostro, only better . . . and that’s when it hit him like a blast of lightning from the blazing sword of one of Erra’s seven Sibitti Cossacks.

Rising abruptly to his feet, Rasputin said, “Forgive me, comrades. I must go look for one I know, who has recently been reassigned.”

With a sharp, penetrating look in his eyes, Cagliostro scrutinized his Russian sidekick. “You have thought of something?”

“What is that strange look I see in your ice-blue eyes, Grigori?” Lenormand asked. “Where are you going?”

Rasputin tapped the side of his nose, a half-smile curling one side of his mouth. “To see dog about man.”

*

Sequestered in his secret lab deep below Goblin Manor, Victor and Quasimodo watch Alan Turing fiddle with knobs, flip switches and rotate control dials on a massive computer he built when he worked for Psychodyne Industries, Inc.

Unlike his laboratory in life and the others Victor had here in hell, this is a surprisingly more modern and sterile environment. Heat lamps, sun lamps and lanterns whose sole purpose is to provide cold, white illumination are strategically placed all over the lab. Metal chairs and desks, workbenches and operating tables, plus huge vats and a vast array of chemical and electrical gadgetry fill the brightly-lit chamber. Not a speck of dust or a single cobweb can be found. The floors are spotless, the walls freshly red-washed, and cooling fans hang suspended from the black ceiling among the electrical conduits and PVC pipes.

“Are you certain it will work this time?” Victor asked.

Alan Mathison Turing, so elegantly attired in a turquoise shirt, dark blue suit and light-green tie from Hellview Road rolled his eyes at Victor. He wore a holster with a Bolt .45 pistol for protection against Plague Zombies, fascists and homophobes. “My good man, how many times must I remind you that I invented the Enigma machine that successfully broke the Nazi code during the Second World War? I was influential in the development of theoretical science, algorithms and computation. Why, my Turing Machine is considered the very first computer.” He huffed in a manner Victor often found to be most annoying. “Of course it will work!”

“My apologies,” said Victor, choosing to ignore Turing’s arrogance.

“Apology accepted,” Turing replied, returning to his work.

“But on the off chance that it won’t work, Alan, we’ll have to find another specimen and then give it the old college try once again,” said Victor. Already dressed for that eventuality, he wore black work pants, shirt and leather apron. He took pride in his appearance, even though there was little he could do to conceal his scarred face and bulging brow, although his neck bolts were brightly polished, as were his thick-soled, hobnailed boots.

“That’s something you’re quite adept at, I’m sure,” said Turing.

“We have mastered the art of the body-snatching,” said Quasimodo, his sense of hearing having been restored to him by Gorgonous in a rare moment of mercy during his only trip to the Mortuary. Having changed out of his tuxedo, the former Hunchback of Notre Dame now looked spiffy in his 1970s, lime-green leisure suit, brown cowboy boots and a yellow T-shirt emblazoned with the words: Disco Sucks! “Even those two sons of the bitches, Burke and Hare, cannot compete with us. Is that not correct, mon ami?”

“True enough, Quasimodo,” Victor told him, remembering how the two body snatchers had tried to cheat him when he needed their help in building a new body for Joseph Merrick, the Elephant Man. But Frankenstein evened the score by sending them both to Slab A. Sadly, his dream of helping Merrick went up in smoke, as had all his dreams in life, as well as in his hellish afterlife. But that misadventure gave birth to a new idea and a new venture.

“We shall succeed, of this I am certain,” said Quasimodo. “Madame Marie assured me that we shall succeed in the building of our cyborg.”

Victor’s monstrous face turned red. “You told her of our work?”

“Oui. So I did.”

“I’d damn you if you weren’t already damned, Quasimodo. You and your silly fortune teller, bah! Love is not only blind, it is deaf and mute, as well. I can’t stop you from seeing that woman, but you are forbidden from ever bringing her here again. Understand? And never discuss the family business with outsiders, no matter how much you trust them. Got that?”

Quasimodo nodded and hung his head in shame. “I shall do as you say, my friend.”

But Victor wasn’t quite finished with his rant. “Damn right you will! Erra and his seven Sibitti are still running amok with their punishments, the plagues are evolving, the floods continue to wreak havoc throughout hell, and you waste your time consorting with fortune tellers while we have important work to do.” He shook his head. “My word, Quasimodo! I think your brain’s been rattled from all those years spent ringing cathedral bells.”

“Will you two stop bitching like a couple of aging queens and let me work in peace?” Turing shouted.

While the father of the computer kept checking his settings and Victor prepared his instruments, Quasimodo waited patiently, if not silently, for the doctor to give him his orders.

“They tell me you prefer the men over the women, Mister Alan,” said the hunchback. “And for that, you were damned for eternity?”

Turing sighed in frustration but replied to Quasimodo’s question while he continued to work. “No. Satan’s counterpart cares nothing about who we love and with whom we have sex,” he said, having chosen chemical castration as an alternative to prison after being prosecuted for homosexual acts. “It was my Enigma machine that damned me.”

“How do you mean?”

“Breaking the Nazi code may have helped win the war for Britain and her allies, but it also cost the lives of many German soldiers who were just doing their duty,” Turin said.

“But your machine helped to save lives!”

Turin sighed once more. “Apparently, even in war it is better to be killed than to kill. The sixth commandment leaves no room for interpretation. It is what it is.”

“Well then,” said Victor. “Let’s have some fun, shall we?”

Turing clapped his hands. “I say that’s a jolly good idea, old boy! Now, ready your instruments, if you please. Quasimodo, fetch the operating tables.”

Quasimodo rolled the two operating tables into place, both draped in black sheets that covered what appeared to be bodies. He noticed a particular instrument he had never seen before. This had a visual monitor, much like a computer. “What is this machine?” he asked.

“That, my dear boy is called an electroencephalograph,” Turing told him. His knowledge of automation and computer science had been of great value to Victor when they first began their little experiment. “Here, try this on for size.” He handed Quasimodo a strange-looking cap that had wires and electrodes attached to it.”

“What is this material?” asked the hunchback.

“A biaxially-oriented, polyester film made from stretched polyethylene terephthalate,” Turing explained.

Quasimodo placed the cap upon his head. “This is all the mumbo-jumbo to me.”

“It’s Mylar, Quasimodo. Mylar, like those silly balloons you love so much,” said Victor.

Although the Hunchback of Notre Dame nodded like some bobblehead doll, it was quite apparent that he was as lost in the realm of science as a soul lost in hell. “But what does it do?”

“It records the electrical wavelengths of the brain,” Turing told him. “Here, sit down and let me show you.” When Quasimodo sat in the chair next to Turing, the professor then connected some wires and switched on the encephalograph. The monitor buzzed to life and projected all sorts of squiggly, zig-zag lines moving across the screen.

“Those are alpha waves, dear boy. That is the rhythm of an active thought process . . . your brain when it’s awake. Delta waves display the rhythm of a sleeping brain. Even though we’re dead, our brains and our hearts continue to function. Illusion? Maybe. But I think not.”

“I find it most illuminating that Quasimodo actually has an active thought process,” Victor quipped. “Sometimes I wonder about him.”

“You are in a most jocular mood today, Docteur,” said Quasimodo. “But still I believe the soul is in the heart.”

Victor wagged a finger at his assistant. “The soul is in the brain, you ninny! We’ve been through all this before and no doctor or philosopher in hell could reach any sort of agreement on the exact location of the soul. But I have experimented with the dead and I know better. While I could jump-start a dead heart and keep it beating, I could not reanimate the dead without a usable brain that can be reawakened to function on some cognitive level.”

“Quasimodo’s correct,” said Turing, removing the Mylar cap from Quasimodo’s head. “The soul is located in the heart.”

Victor put his hands to his ears and shook his head. “Oh, please, Alan! Not you, too?”

“See? I do have the active thought process,” said Quasimodo.

Victor heaved a long sigh of frustration. “Yes, yes, yes — so you’ve demonstrated.”

He turned to a pile of charts and graphs lying upon his desk. “Well, for now, we’ve accomplished arrested evaporation or suspended dissipation, if you prefer. However, there’s still much work ahead of us.”

“Yes, we’ve managed to keep our test subjects from dashing off to the Mortuary for a limited time, once the brain has been removed from the body,” said Turing. “Our goal now is to turn that temporary suspension of dissipation into a permanent state of arrested evaporation.” He winked at Victor. “See that? I managed to incorporate both your terms into one sentence.”

“Brilliant,” Victor said with a trace of sarcasm in his voice. “And by the way, I like to call what we are aiming to do here Halted Reassignment.”

“Dissipation, evaporation . . . each is a euphemism for death, as we know and experience it here in hell,” said Quasimodo. “And Reassignment is but an infernal version of resurrection, is this not so, mes amis?”

“Quite so, Quasimodo,” Victor said to him. “I’m very impressed with your thought process. One would almost think you truly have a working brain.”

“Perhaps I am much smarter than you think,” the hunchback retorted.

“Or do you think you are much smarter than you actually are?” Victor replied with a laugh.

“Gentlemen, that’s neither here nor there,” said Turing. “What I find rather paradoxical is that while we’re all dead and perfectly aware of it, we keep thinking in terms of life and death.”

Victor nodded in agreement. “I see no other way of thinking about our existence here in hell. In the afterlife, we do our best to avoid Reassignment, just as we did our best to avoid an untimely death when we were alive.”

“And what we do here, you and Monsieur Turing, is very much the same as what the Undertaker and Gorgonous do in the Mortuary,” said Quasimodo.

“Quite so, Quasimodo old boy. Quite so,” said Turing.

“But I won’t call it Reassignment,” said Victor. “I made up my own rather nice term for what we do, what I have always tried to do: Necrogenesis — transforming death into life.”

“I think I understand,” said Quasimodo. “Whereas once you created life through death and constructed a living being from the bodies of the dead, you are now attempting to reassign people by transforming them into robots.”

“They’re called cyborgs, Quasimodo,” Victor said, exasperated.

“May I ask again why we are trying to build a cyclops?” asked the hunchback.

“To see if we can do it!” Victor snapped. “And it’s cyborg, Quasimodo. A cyborg, for hell’s sake! How many times must I tell you that?” Taking a deep breath and exhaling slowly to control his temper, Victor said, more kindly this time, “Now please, let’s get started, and do stand by to assist when called upon.”

Quasimodo bowed and replied in a slightly mocking tone of voice, “Yes, master.”

*

Grigori Yefimovich Rasputin, lost in deep thought, strolls with a purpose down Belial Way. The street-corner Fear Mongers and Doom Sayers all scurry to get out of his way, his smoldering, blue-eyed stare chilling the damned down to the grimarrow of their moribones. No one dares cross his path or even remain on the same side of the street.

Maybe is chance he has money, Rasputin muses. We need his kind of big money — and we need it before some other hellizen purchases old Hellstrom House.

Plague Zombies shamble down the streets of Port Boil until they melt into steaming pools of liquefied necroflesh and moribones which soon vanish, only to reappear in the Mortuary to face Reassignment. Others, suffering great pain, confusion and anger, go after uninfected souls, biting and tearing them apart like a herd of resurrected, hungry corpses attacking the living in some ancient horror film. Some of those bitten are immediately stricken by the contagion, while others run screaming down the street. Of these, some return to their homes and wait to fall prey to a host of symptoms, while many commit suicide, which everyone in hell knows is a pointless endeavor.

If not for plagues, wealthy friends not flee New Hell in search of refuge.

When Rasputin reaches Libertine Lane and turns the corner he spies a platoon of demons using automatic weapons to take down Plague Zombies before they can attack and infect others. These demons are the Uncubi, all the unpublished writers who had ever lived, would-be authors in hell who wound up in the netherworld because the Muses they thought they were courting were, in reality, hell’s own Nephilim.

The Uncubi look like flickering, three-dimensional images that emerged from an old, black and white television. Infernal hybrids of Man, Woman and Pteranodon, they’re naked and without genitals, and have wriggling worms for fingers; their weapons, the Hexum-9 assault rifles, have been customized exclusively for the demons’ hands. Because of their congress with the Nephilim, the Uncubi have the distinct honor of visiting the Mortuary immediately upon their arrival in hell, whereupon the Undertaker and Gorgonous turn them into a new breed of androgynous demons not indigenous to hell, as are the Kigali.

Although the Uncubi are indistinguishable from one another, what with their lack of apparel and their pointy, almost triangular heads, Rasputin recognizes their leader by the Union badge hanging around his neck. This Uncubus is known as the Unknown Poet but is more commonly referred to as Mister Up. In life, he’d had an eidetic memory, and while he never published a single poem, he remembered every word he’s ever written. In hell, however, he remembers nothing of those poems. Not only is the Unknown Poet the hetman of these New Breed demons, but he’s also their Union representative and reports directly to Jimmy Hoffa.

“Gospodin Up!” Rasputin called out to the Uncubus. “What goes?”

Mister Up walked over to Rasputin and they bowed to each other. “The Boss called us in to do crowd control,” he told the Russian. “The Plague Zombies are growing in number and getting out of hand, infecting Old and New Dead alike. We’re trying to stem the tide of the contagion.”

“You not worried about getting sick?”

“No, my friend. We Uncubi are immune to Erra’s plagues. But many of my tribe have been swept away by the floods and Flux ravaging hell.”

“Be careful and be safe, tovarisch.” Rasputin bowed to the demon.

Mister Up bowed in return. “You do the same.”

With that, the Unknown Poet took off to rejoin his platoon.

Continuing on his way, Rasputin headed down Libertine Lane and then Dead Man’s Curve. As he approached Crud Alley the sounds of whimpering and moaning made him pause. He peeked around the corner of an old warehouse and into the alley, and as fate and hell would have it, saw the very soul he was looking for: the Orange Ogre.

They hit Ogre and kicked him. They whipped him with motorcycle chains and beat him with baseball bats. But Ogre did not fight back. Instead, he cried out for help — a cry that went unheard or simply ignored — then fell into the muck and mire of the alley.

Having seen enough, Rasputin stepped into the alley. “Stop!” he shouted, his voice edged with eerie and unsettling power. “Turn. Face me, swine!”

Almost immediately the young punks stopped beating Ogre’s diseased body and turned around to confront the Siberian peasant with the wild and crazy blue eyes.

“Who the fuck are you?” one of the gangbangers dared to ask.

“One you must obey,” said Rasputin. He stretched out his left arm and pointed his index finger at the street gang. “Drop weapons. Come here,” he added, curling his finger inward.

As if hypnotized in a flash, the three punks dropped their weapons and walked towards the Mad Monk like a pack of mindless Plague Zombies.

“Remain here. Move not,” Rasputin commanded them.

The gangstas did as they were told, not moving, not even blinking.

Rasputin hurried over the where Ogre lay curled in the fetal position next to a garbage dumpster on the slimy brimstone pavement of Crud Alley, staring wide-eyed at his savior.

“You hurt?” Rasputin asked.

“A little, but I’ll be okay,” Ogre replied. “Say, don’t I know you? Wait — don’t tell me. I think I remember.” His eyes went wide. “Vladimir?”

Rasputin ground his teeth. “Nyet!”

“You sound like some foreign-born immigrant.”

With a sigh of frustration, the Mad Monk said, “We are all foreigners in hell. I am Grigori Yefimovich Rasputin.”

The light of memory and recognition flared in Ogre’s eyes. “Greg!” With Rasputin’s helping hand he rose to his feet. “That idiot Undertaker and his pervert of an assistant . . . what’s his name?”

“Gorgonous.”

“That’s the asshole! They keep screwing with my brain.”

“All memory of who and what you were in life is gone. Erased. Obliterated. No damned soul has memory of you. Not even I, Rasputin, can undo what has been done.”

“More recent memories I can remember,” Ogre explained. “Like, I was in Lost Angeles, in Hellywood, to secure a deal to be the host of a hellivision surreality show when the plagues began. I got sick but made it back here to Port Boil when the floods started. I think I drowned. Then I woke up in that Mortuary wearing these monkey hands. Not sure how long I was there.”

“Time is irrelevant in hell.” Rasputin looked at the Ogre. “You are mess. Need doctor.”

“Yeah, I’m sick and my body’s pretty messed up, all right. This really sucks. But at least I still have my money. Plenty of money. I love money. Who doesn’t love money?”

Rasputin furrowed his brow. “You are like czars of old.”

“I don’t know what that is, but I have lots of money. Big money. Huge money!”

He still has money! This was exactly what Rasputin had been hoping for. “Where you going, tovarisch?”

“The Worst Irrational Bank.”

“That some bank, that bank.”

“It’s the worst there is, Greg. I pay ninety percent interest fees, but I can afford it. Besides, no other bank in New Hell will do business with me.”

With his reputation, I understand, Rasputin told himself. “Why you go to bank?”

“I want to make a withdrawal so I can pay to have someone find out who’s responsible for all these plagues and floods. I can’t remember. Do you know who’s responsible for this mess?”

Before Rasputin could answer, a loud crack of thunder echoed from one end of Port Boil to the other. He glanced at the crimson vault hanging over New Hell and then saw them gliding across the blood-red sky on invisible wings: eight majestic figures, dreadful in their dusty raiment, with cloaks of human skin decorated with braided scalps. These personages shimmered, with eyes aglow and swords in hand.

“They are responsible,” he told Ogre, pointing at the sky.

At that moment hellizens began screaming and rushing about, looking for somewhere to hide. When a bolt of lightning struck and obliterated the street thugs standing as still and silent as statues near the mouth of the alley, Rasputin grabbed Ogre and dragged him behind the dumpster, where together they knelt, cowered and covered their heads with their arms.

A chasm opened in the middle of the street and hundreds of hellions tumbled into it. More turned into ice and then shattered into numerous pieces when they toppled over and crashed to the ground. Others were mowed down and mutilated by a rolling juggernaut of sharp, glistening blades. Lightning blasted untold numbers of the damned. Lost souls by the score crumbled into sand. Holy fire caused others to burst into flames, turning them into black ash. Winds howled and raged with tempestuous violence. A rainstorm from the crimson vault above caused more flooding, fear and commotion. Mayhem and destruction struck fast and furiously, and then it was over as quickly as it had begun.

“I think I remember now,” said Ogre. “Some bastard named Arrow is behind all this fucked up shit.”

“Erra. Not Arrow,” said Rasputin. “Erra and his seven, the Sibitti.”

“Erra. Arrow. Error. What in hell’s the difference? That asshole and his little jet boys have to pay for what’s been done to me. They all have to pay, everyone — even Satan and those two vermin in the Mortuary.”

Rasputin understood the Orange Ogre, who wanted nothing more than revenge against every soul in hell who had ever mocked, laughed and turned against him. Vengeance boiled within the Ogre, consuming him, festering in him like an open wound. It was the desire of a simple-minded soul, petty and futile. The Russian mystic was certain there was some way he could turn Ogre’s hatred to his and Cagliostro’s advantage.

“I want to get even with them all!” Ogre shouted.

“Ever been in army?”

“I don’t remember.”

“Military school?”

“School? School is hard!”

Rasputin tugged on his beard. “Ever fight in war?”

“Not that I recall. Why would I do that, anyway? That’s what poor people are for. They’re born cannon fodder.” Ogre shrugged. “But since I’m dead and in hell, what can be worse than the Mortuary? I’ll take my chances.”

“Then would you fight enemies?”

“That’s a good question, Greg. My enemies can destroy me with ease. They can twist and bend and break my body, then put it back together any way they see fit. Oh, if only I had a body that could not be hurt, not get sick or fucked with.”

“How do you mean, Ogre?”

“Well, like a suit of armor. No, not really a suit of armor, I want to be some kind of indestructible mechanical man.”

“Like robot?”

“Yes! One of those exterminator things, equipped with blasters and ray guns and Martian disintegrator pistols. Nothing could hurt or stop me then!”

An idea exploded in Rasputin’s head like a blast of lightning from a Sibitti sword. “You come with me. Now.”

“Wait! What are you talking about? You want to help me?”

“Da. But will take much money to do this thing.”

“Of course it will take money. Everything takes money. Money talks, bullshit walks. You’re not bullshitting me, are you, Greg?”

Rasputin ground his teeth together; he hated to be called Greg. “Gospodin Ogre, how hot does revenge burn in your heart?”

The Orange Ogre rubbed his big orangutan hands together as a wicked grin twisted his pumpkin-face into a nasty-looking mask. “I’ll pay anything to even the score and show Arrow and Satan who’s the real boss around here!”

“Erra,” Rasputin corrected the tangerine troll.

“Whatever! If you’re loyal to me I’ll make it well worth your while.”

Rasputin stroked his beard and smiled. “Then come. Now. We talk more.”

“Where are we going, Greg?”

“For cup of tea.”

*

While Quasimodo scurries off to see to his part in the experiment, Victor wheels over to the supercomputer a large medical instrument of his own design, one he calls the Prometheus Bonesaw. Built of bright, shiny metal, this device resembles a dental drill crossed with an X-ray machine; it was constructed for him by the sinister and secretive Bumbershoot Corporation. (Many of the damned still accuse the Bumbershoot executives of being in league with Erra and having concocted for him the contagions that still inundate the nether regions. But this is a blatant fabrication and an outright lie, for the Babylonian god is more than capable of creating his own pandemics and pestilential fallout.)

Doctor Frankenstein sets his machine in place, plugs it in and begins adjusting its settings.

Meanwhile, Quasimodo removes the white sheets covering the two metal operating tables. Lying upon the first is a cyborg made out of dark blue metal and bearing a striking similarity to a suit of medieval armor. Upon the second table lays a man dressed in an elegant dark suit, white shirt and black tie. He’s laid out like a corpse in a coffin, eyes closed and hands folded over his breast. Of course, he isn’t “dead,” for if he was, his body would have already gone to the Mortuary to be reassigned. Alan Turing had abducted the damned soul lying on the table and administered the Hexoroform to put him to sleep.

“Who is he?” Quasimodo asked.

“Some asshole United States senator,” Victor replied.

“Which party did he belong to?”

Victor threw his hands into the air in frustration. His patience often ran thin where the hunchback was concerned. “The birthday party! How the fuck would I know and why the fuck should I care? I was dead and in hell long before this asshole arrived.”

“Will you two please shut up?” said Turing. “I’m ready to begin.”

“Then let’s get the show on the road,” said Victor, glad to get underway. He pressed a button on his Prometheus Bonesaw and it immediately began to hum and cause the floor to vibrate. A bright blue light emanated from the point of the machine’s drill and burned four holes into the man’s skull. There was no mortisblood whatsoever because the incisions had been instantly cauterized. Once this had been accomplished, Victor shut off his brand-new gizmo.

Just like old times, he told himself, feeling energized by the promise of what result this experiment would yield.

Next, Turing inserted four tiny netherchips into the holes in the man’s skull, which corresponded to the location of the frontal, parietal, temporal and occipital lobes of the brain; these were connected by wires attached to his computer. Then he flipped a toggle to the ON position. Lights flashed. Sparks sizzled and flew about the room. Circuits hummed and ghostly wisps of blue smoke floated towards the ceiling. The body of the damned soul trembled and writhed for a few seconds, then fell still. Turing switched off the toggle, carefully removed the wires attached to the netherchips and tossed them aside.

“S’il vous plaît, what is next?” Quasimodo asked.

“The netherchips each contain a special battery designed to provide continuous electrical stimulation to the brain,” Turing explained. “If my theory and my calculations are correct, the chips will keep the brain active after it’s been removed from the skull of our senatorial guinea pig over here.” He rubbed his hands together in a most theatrical manner. “Your turn, Victor.”

Frankenstein recalled how he had wanted to transplant the Elephant Man’s brain into a new body, but wasn’t sure he could succeed. An eternity ago in Brimstone, Hellizona, in a bizarre experiment, Merlin the Magician had successfully switched Victor’s brain with the brain of the creature he called Adam. But whatever strange magic Merlin had employed was far beyond anything Victor was familiar with. Although he had tried to find Merlin, the magician had not been seen or heard from since the coming of Erra and his Seven Sibitti. Now, however, with Turing’s knowledge and assistance, Victor was confident that an active brain could be successfully transplanted from one body to another,  even though the host body was inorganic, a thing made of metal and electronic circuitry.

Victor adjusted the settings on his hi-tech Bonesaw and placed his hands on the controls. “While I enjoy using a hacksaw or chainsaw, they’re too messy for an operation of this magnitude.”

Next, he adjusted the settings on the control panel of his device and swung the extension arm into position. Closing one eye, he took aim, licked his lips in anticipation and maneuvered the tube head into position above the neck of the comatose senator.

“Quickly now, Quasimodo! Grab your glove and get over here,” said Victor.

Snatching a catcher’s mitt hanging on a wall, the Hunchback of Notre Dame scampered over to stand at the head of the operating table.

Taking careful aim again, Victor switched on his Bonesaw and watched as a crimson beam from the machine’s barrel-like nozzle began slicing through the neck of the unconscious senator.

“It’s working! It’s working!” he cried.

Moments later, the head rolled off the table, but Quasimodo caught it in his catcher’s mitt. Once again, there was no messy mortisblood to mop up afterwards.

“Nice catch!” said Turing.

“Place the head on the towel on top of that cart over by the wall and bring that cart over here,” Victor instructed his hunchbacked assistant.

Quasimodo quickly did as he was told and wheeled the cart carrying the senator’s severed head over to Victor. The infamous doctor then used his surgical instrument to cut off the top of his patient’s skull. He shut down the Bonesaw, pulled a Hexacto knife from his apron pocket, delicately removed the bulbous grey matter from the skull and cut the brainstem free of the spinal cord. Only a small amount of mortisblood and spinal fluid dripped onto the towel. He set the brain with its four embedded netherchips next to the head of the nameless senator.

“Toutes nos félicitations, my friends,” said Quasimodo, pointing to the table where the senator’s headless body reposed. “You have succeeded. Look!”

Victor and Turing glanced at the table: the politician’s torso had not shimmered and faded and gone off to the Mortuary.

“Eureka!” Doctor Frankenstein shouted. “Your netherchips work, Alan. The brain thrives! It thrives! Oh, it thrives!”

“This proves your theory,” said Turing.

Nodding excitedly, Victor said, “As long as the brain continues to function, the body will not dissipate and dash off to meet the Undertaker.” Gently he picked up the still-active brain and carried it over to the metallic figure lying on the other operating table. “Quasimodo, if you please . . . flip the lid open so we can install and link the brain to the automaton’s circuitry.”

Popping open the top of the helmet-like head of the lifeless robot-knight, Quasimodo stepped aside so Victor and Turing could go to work. Together the brilliant scientist and the equally gifted physician inserted the brain into the cyborg’s head, connected its nerve endings and brainstem to circuits and wiring. They finished their task in a jiffy. Quasimodo closed and secured the lid of the cyborg’s head and then scampered away as if the thing was going to suddenly spring to life, reach out with one arm and strangle him.

Turing checked a small, drop-down screen on his computer’s monitor. “The brain is active but still slumbers, lost in dreamland,” he said. “Quasimodo, be a good chap and kindly step aside while I attempt to awaken the brain.”

“Excusez-moi, Mister Alan,” said Quasimodo. “How will you control this cyclamen thing, once you have awakened it?”

“For damnation’s sake, Quasimodo — this is not a plant!” said Victor. “It’s a cyborg, you apish buffoon! A cyborg got it?”

Quasimodo’s eyes darted back and forth over Victor, Turing and the cyborg. “I hope its brain is in a most reasonable frame of mind.”

“If not, we’ll just have to reason with it,” said Victor.

“Tally ho!” said Turing, flipping a switch and pressing two buttons on his computer.

A weird sound echoed from inside the helmet-head of the cyborg; if a machine could sigh, it would have sounded like that.

“The voice box you designed seems to be functioning,” Victor said to Turing.

The two eye slits in the knight’s helmet began to glow with violet light.

“Vision is working, too,” said Turing.

Slowly, the cyborg sat up, stretched its arms, shifted its position and swung its legs over the side of the table. An electronic yawn emanated from the cybernetic knight. The steel hulk lowered its arms and looked around the chamber.

Victor was so elated that he stammered. “It’s . . . it’s—”

“I believe the word you are looking for is alive,” Turing said with a grin.

The cyborg focused its attention on Victor and Turing and then spoke in a computerized simulation of a human voice:

“Where am I? This doesn’t look like the Mortuary.”

“That’s because it’s not,” said Victor. “You are in my home — Goblin Manor.”

“And who the hell are you?”

“My name is Doctor Victor Frankenstein, and these are my two associates—”

“What the hell?” The cyborg glanced down and saw his metal chest, arms and legs. “What’s happened to me?” Raising its head, the thing stared at Victor. “What have you done?”

“There, there, my good man, there’s no reason to become so overwrought,” said Turing. “We have simply made you powerful and invincible. Never again will you experience the cessation of existence, the horrible dissipation and torments of the Undertaker’s cold slab, and the unsettling disorientation and agony of Reassignment.”

“We have made you a god among men and demons,” Victor told the cyborg.

It was then that the cyborg noticed his torso lying on the other operating table, and his empty, disembodied head sitting on the cart.

“That . . . that’s me!”

“Why, yes. As a matter of fact, it is,” said Victor.

The cyborg roared like a hadesaur made of steel, hopped off the operating table, turned around so he was facing it and then pounded it into scrap metal with his huge fists. Then he picked up the mangled table and threw it across the room, where it crashed with a clang and a clatter against the far wall.

“Ungrateful little bitch,” Turing remarked.

Swinging around, the damned cyborg howled and moved menacingly towards Victor, Turing and Quasimodo.

“Talk about déjà vu!” said Victor.

“I am afraid there is no reasoning with this thing,” said Quasimodo. With a shrug, he flung himself upon the cybernetic monster and started beating it with his fists.

“Quasimodo, no!” Victor shouted.

The cyborg seized the hunchback with its metal hands, lifted him high above his head . . . and abruptly collapsed to the floor, Quasimodo landing atop him. A bluish smoke floated from the now lightless eyes of the cyborg and quickly vanished. Quasimodo picked himself up, dusted himself off and walked over to where Victor and Turing huddled together like a pair of frightened chimpanzees.

“That was very brave of you,” Turing said to the hunchback.

“I hope you’re not hurt,” said Victor.

“Thank you both, but I am fine,” Quasimodo replied. Then his eyes went wide. “Look, my friends. The head, the body — they have vanished!”

“Back to the Mortuary with our senatorial friend, I see,” said Turing.

Victor’s hopes and dreams crashed and burned. “We have failed, Alan. Failed, I tell you!”

“No, we haven’t,” Turing told him. “We succeeded. My netherchips did work, if only for a short time, and your theory is proven. We can build a cyborg using the necro-brain of a damned soul. What ruined everything are the laws of hell, of cessation and Reassignment. You can’t beat the devil, but we made a damn good show of it, what?”

“Oui,” Quasimodo agreed. “You two fine gentlemen managed to keep the brain working long enough to make it part of that demonic cyclone.”

“You mean cyborg,” Victor said. “But it certainly was a cyclone of demonic temperament.” The spark of an idea suddenly flared in his fevered brain. “Quasimodo, do you recall the conversation we had with Burke and Hare when we approached them regarding the purchase of new limbs for Joseph Merrick?”

“That I do indeed,” Quasimodo replied. “I am most familiar with that look in your eyes, my friend. You have come up with a new idea?”

“Of course I have!” Victor said with a laugh. He cracked his knuckles and grinned mischievously. His brain was on fire with renewed hope, and his customary tenacity reasserted itself. “Listen. We are but lost souls inhabiting necroflesh forms that are fabrications, mere imitations of the bodies we had in life. Correct?”

Quasimodo nodded and shrugged.

“Victor, whatever are you talking about?” Turing asked.

“We are not native to hell and thus our bodies are not real and have no actual substantiality. Not in the same way they would be if we had originated in hell,” Victor explained.

“Do you speak of demons?” Quasimodo asked.

“Yes indeed, my funny little asinine,” Victor replied. “We use the brain of a demon.”

Turing’s eyes opened wide. “Please don’t tell me you’re thinking of abducting one of the Kigali. Oh, Victor, if you were to do that there would literally be hell to pay.”

Victor shook his head. “I’m talking about the Uncubi. I think we may be able to persuade one of them to take part in our little experiment.”

“As the guinea pig?” Quasimodo asked, rubbing his chin thoughtfully.

Turing chewed on a fingernail. “I don’t think any Uncubus would agree to that.”

“Then we’ll just have to kidnap one or two of them,” said Victor. “Shouldn’t be too difficult to do, I’d say.”

Quasimodo gasped. “But they are our friends! We cannot do such a thing.”

Victor shook an angry fist in the air. “In the name of science and research we can!”

“He’s right, Victor,” Turing agreed. “Besides, the Uncubi may indeed be demons but they are not native to hell. Remember: once they were human until the Undertaker turned them into demons. Your idea won’t work.”

“Fiddlesticks!” said Victor. “There’s always a bat in the belfry to muck things up.” There has to be a way, he thought, undismayed. There must be a way!

“And yet, mes savants amis, I think I may have discovered the thing that causes the bat to fly about the bell tower,” said Quasimodo.

“Do you mean to say you know why we failed?” Turing asked him.

The Hunchback of Notre Dame nodded and took a long pause; whether for dramatic effect or not, Victor didn’t know, but the doctor quickly lost his patience.

“Don’t just stand there like one of your gargoyles, Quasimodo. Tell us!” said Victor.

Quasimodo blushed but did not hesitate to speak up: “You may have had the success keeping the brain active, if only for the short time, but the heart . . . the heart must be kept functioning, too, I am thinking.”

Victor and Turing turned to each other and grinned like two mischievous schoolboys.

“Exactly,” said Turing. “Like the Tin Woodsman, our cyborg needs a heart.”

Victor and Quasimodo exchanged glances and then shrugged. Neither of them got Turing’s reference, but Victor did catch the gist of his meaning.

“I think I understand,” he said. “Our hearts, once they stop beating or whatever it is our hearts do when we’re dusted and sent off for Reassignment, are the key.”

“I’m no physician, but I think we’ve been going about all this in the wrong way,” said Turing. “Once the heart ceases to function, the brain also ceases to function. Thus, the body dissipates and shuffles off to the Undertaker’s grim parlor.” He scratched his chin. “As our sweet little hunchback has suggested, the heart must be kept beating.”

Victor glanced at Quasimodo. “Are you certain about your idea?”

“Yes, I am dead certain of it,” Quasimodo suggested, irony in his voice.

“Then by Jove, that’s it!” Turing shouted. “The brain and all this technology won’t keep a heart beating if it’s not integrated with the body of the cyborg. The heart has to be placed inside the cyborg and attached to the circuitry of the brain. The two must be in tune with each other, just as they were in life.”

“I wish you had thought of this sooner, Quasimodo,” said Victor. He couldn’t believe that he of all people, who had conquered death during his lifetime, had overlooked this one simple fact. Hell must finally be getting to me.

Quasimodo grinned and thrust out his chest. “So if the heart is the key, then it must certainly follow that the soul is located in the heart.”

“Don’t start in on that again, you misshapen lump of clay!” Victor told the hunchback. Then he turned to Turing. “Alan, how many cybernetic bodies do we have left?”

“Two, including this now useless one lying over there on the floor,” Turing replied. “But the other one is merely an empty shell. No circuitry, wiring or fiber optic cables. No electronics whatsoever. And neither of one of us has the money to purchase what we need to conduct another experiment.”

“That freaking Monsieur Howard Carter can no longer provide the gold we require to fund our experiments,” said Quasimodo. For a short time, he had managed to procure body parts from his friend Gorgonous, Deputy Assistant of the Mortuary. The hunchback then gave those body parts to Carter and Ernst Haeckel in exchange for gold to help finance Victor’s experiments. But then, suddenly and without notice, that source of revenue dried up.

“And fuck that King Midas and his shitty Buttcoins, too!” Turing added.

“Yes, yes! Screw them, curse them and damn them both, I say!” Victor ranted.

“They are already damned, my friend,” said Quasimodo.

“Screw you, too!” Victor shouted, his temper getting the better of him. “Where will we ever find another benefactor, another lost soul who’s bored and has a lot of money to throw around?”

“Do not worry, mon ami,” said Quasimodo, grinning and winking at Victor and Turing. “I have the hunch that something will turn up. Is this not, after all, hell?”

“Oh, how utterly droll,” Victor told him.

*

“So, Gospodin Cagliostro and I wish to have place of our own where friends can meet,” Rasputin tells the Orange Ogre.

He, Ogre, Cagliostro and Marie Lenormand gathered together in a small, backroom of Nick’s Czar and Grill. The Russian tea room is crowded at this time every Sinday, so for privacy they used the chamber for their meeting.

“How much money are we talking, here?” asks Ogre, the hairy fingers of his orangutan hands tapping the tabletop as if they’re using an old-school calculator.

“The way we have it figured—” Cagliostro starts to say, as he’s interrupted by the arrival of their waiter, a rotund bald man who had once been the premier of the Soviet Union. The former Russian dictator brings in four cups of Sindemon tea and a plate of stewed, rotten turnips and onions, sets them on the table and then removes one shoe. He bangs three times on the table with his shoe, slips it back on his foot and then leaves.

“What’s up with that?” asked Ogre.

“Old habit from former life,” Rasputin replied.

“So, let me get this straight,” said Ogre. “You want enough diablos to open this exclusive golf course and by giving you what you want, I get what I want?”

“Not golf course. Private club,” Rasputin told him. “But da, one hand wash other.”

“The money must be given free and clear, like a gift,” said Lenormand. “No fee, no interest, no reimbursement.”

“That is the offer we make,” Cagliostro said.

“Okay, but what’s in it for me?” Ogre wanted to know.

Rasputin clutched the unholy talisman hidden inside his shirt. “You will become most powerful soul in hell. No more fear of torture and pain. No more to be threatened by plague and flood. Your body will be made of metal. Indestructible.”

“Like a robot?” Ogre asked.

“Oui c’est correct,” Lenormand assured him. “But you will be better than a robot. You will be a cyborg. The first of its kind in hell.”

Ogre picked his nose. “Awesome! I’ll be like some powerful monster in a horror film. I like horror films. Do you like horror films? I don’t like to be scared, but horror films are a fun kind of scared.” He leered at Lenormand. “You know, you’re really quite a hot-looking broad. I like foreign women the most. You and I should—”

“Don’t even think about it,” she warned him.

If looks could dust a damned soul and send him or her to the Mortuary, the look Cagliostro shot the Orange Ogre would have done just that. “She is my compagno di sesso femminile — my woman,” he said. “Say no more or I will cut off your balls and give them to the Sibitti.”

“Okay! Okay!” said Ogre, holding up his orangutan hands. “You Italians certainly play rough, don’t you? Now, where were we?”

“Fifty thousand diablos,” Cagliostro told him.

Rasputin shook his head. “One-hundred thousand, tovarisch. We must consider cost of remodeling, license fee, appliances, supplies, furniture and such for our venture alone. Plus, we must take into account Doctor Frankenstein’s fee.”

Cagliostro winked conspiratorially at the Siberian peasant. “Ah, so it is. Mama Mia — my brain, it often forgets.”

“No sweat,” said Ogre. “That kind of money is pocket change to me.”

“Da,” said Rasputin. He planned to split fifty-fifty with the infamous doctor, and he was certain it was an offer that would not be refused. He knew and liked the maker of monsters, had great respect for him and would never think of cheating him. Cheating the Orange Ogre, on the other hand — a narcissist so wrapped up in a cloak of vanity that he wouldn’t know a Kigali from a tea kettle — would not bother the Russian’s conscience at all. As for convincing Ogre to undergo the surgery involved, the Mad Monk had a plan for that as well.

Lenormand took out her Tophet cards and placed them on the table. “Pick three cards and lay them face-up on the table, Ogre.”

Ogre wiped a booger on his shirt sleeve and then selected three cards from the deck: the Burning Soul, the Laughing Devil and the #13 card.

“Interesting,” Lenormand remarked. Then she selected three cards and placed one on top of each of the other three: the Hanged Demon, the Pit of Fire and the #666 card. “Very interesting,” she added, giving Cagliostro a quick wink.

“What’s it mean?” Ogre asked eagerly.

“Good news,” she told him. “All your hopes and dreams will be realized. Out of the ashes of defeat will come the resurrection of a victory long denied.”

“That sounds great. Really great! I hate losers. I’m a winner. I like to win. Don’t you?”

“All of us, we like to win,” said Cagliostro. “And so it is that we shall.”

Ogre rubbed his big, hairy hands together. “So what else do I have to do to become a cyborg? Will I be able to use fire and fury to bring down Erra and his gang and kick Satan’s ass right outta hell?”

By hell, this pumpkin head very stupid, Rasputin said to himself. “Without doubt.”

With a sudden frown, Ogre asked, “Is this Frankenstein a liberal? I hate liberals.”

“Of course he is,” said Lenormand. “He is a man of great intelligence.”

Ogre frowned. “I don’t like intelligence. It’s dangerous, unless it’s mine. And I don’t trust people who read books, either. Reading books is for losers. But I’ll do whatever it takes to bring a hell down upon Erra and Satan the likes of which no one has never seen.”

“And so you shall, tovarisch,” Rasputin told him. “So you shall.”

“Then what’s the holdup?”

Rasputin glanced at Cagliostro, who tapped the side of his nose in reply. They were trying to reel in the big fish, but would he take the bait once he was told about the operation? Or would he swim away? No matter, though, for the two mystics were prepared to make sure their catch would be unable to wriggle free of their net.

“It’s a simple operation,” Lenormand told Ogre. “First, you will be put to sleep and then your brain will be placed inside the body of the cyborg.”

“Wait! What?” Ogre said. “You’re going to take out my big, smart brain and stuff it inside the head of some robot?”

“Cyborg, ma chérie. Cyborg.”

“I don’t give a rat’s ass what you call it. I’m not gonna do it and you’re not gonna get my money!” Ogre crossed his arms over his chest and sulked like a little boy.

“But my friend, this is an offer you cannot refuse,” said Cagliostro. He seized the Ogre’s arms, pulled them apart and forced them down upon the table.

“Screw you, you dumb dago!” said Ogre.

“Hold him down!” Lenormand shouted.

Cagliostro’s eyes flared menacingly. “Look at me, Ogre. Look at me!” Ogre looked into the eyes of the Italian mystic — and his orange face turned white. “You will take Marie and myself to your bank and withdraw the money we have asked for. Capisci?”

“I . . . I’m not sure. I don’t know about this,” said Ogre. His eyes slid towards Rasputin. “What should I do? Help me!”

Ready for this, Rasputin smiled at Ogre and removed the talisman hidden inside his shirt. It was an inverted Crucifix made of cedar, pine and cypress, like the one true cross. The number 666 had been carved into it. He held it up by its leather cord and let it swing like a pendulum.

“Concentrate. Stare only at object in my hand,” Rasputin told Ogre. The hepatitis-orange eyes of Ogre darted back and forth, mimicking the movement of the unholy object. “You do as we say, Ogre. Close eyes and think only of my command. Sleep now. When I snap fingers you will wake and obey us as peasant obeys czar.”

Ogre closed his eyes and immediately nodded off. Rasputin tucked the inverted cross back inside his shirt, counted to thirteen and then snapped his fingers.

The Orange Ogre opened his eyes and looked at his companions. “Now what is it that you want me to do?”

“You get money. I go meet with Frankenstein,” said Rasputin.

“Then I can become this all-powerful cyborg?”

“Si, then you will settle all debts with your enemies,” said Cagliostro.

Ogre made the “OK” sign with the fingers of his right orangutan hand. “I’m in!”

Rasputin was pleased. He had hoped it would be easy to get Ogre to agree, although for a moment there he feared he had underestimated the ginger troll. But all had gone as planned and soon he and Cagliostro would have the money to open their Infernium Club.

“Soon Colossus of Hell will make hell his own,” said the Mad Monk of Russia.

*

Sitting at the table in his Goblin Manor parlor, Victor pours a round of drinks for Turing, Quasimodo, Rasputin and himself.

“This is a synthetic blend of my own concoction,” Victor tells Rasputin. “My friends all say it’s quite palatable, but having no taste buds myself, I wouldn’t know.”

Rasputin tastes his drink and smiles. “Is good. Like Russian vodka.”

This pleases Victor. Everyone who samples the beverage declares it a fine beverage, although it has a different flavor for anyone who tastes it. “Thank you, my friend.”

“Victor, old friend, I have always wondered why Erra and Satan leave you alone,” Rasputin says. “Why they not punish you?”

“Good question,” Victor replies, “and one that may forever go unanswered. It’s a discussion with no possibility of a true conclusion.”

They nurse their drinks in a thoughtful silence so dense you could stab it with a pitchfork.

Finally, Turing nodded. “I think we each serve a purpose here in hell. Whether to slave and suffer, to hope where there is no hope, to strive in vain when only failure and frustration await us, each one of us has some role to play. But such things aren’t for us to know.”

“And what do you think is our role, Alan?” Victor asked.

“To serve and to suffer, of course. All of us who have been damned to an eternity in this asylum of paradox and pain serve the Devil in some fashion. Therefore we are all subjects and servants of His Satanic Majesty. We are merely pawns in Satan’s game of eternal woe.”

“Da, if I knew such answers I would be czar sitting on throne of heaven,” said Rasputin. He paused then suggested, “I think Devil is silent partner to Almighty Above.”

“Could be,” Victor agreed. “At one time Lucifer was the Almighty’s favorite angel.”

“And now Satan is Almighty’s henchman, as Daemon Grim is Satan’s henchman.”

“Oui, this is true,” said Quasimodo. “The Devil, he does the work of heaven so the seigneur upstairs never has dirty hands.”

“Yes,” Turing said. “Satan works for heaven, if you consider it from that angle. The Almighty could have destroyed Lucifer but instead banished him here to hell, exiled to Perdition where he labors to punish the wicked. But I think Satan has grown somewhat lax in his duties, so now Erra and his Sibitti, the Almighty’s new enforcers, have been sent to show the Devil how it’s done.”

Victor closed his eyes for a moment and sipped his drink, not for the flavor of it, but to wet his throat. “Did you ever consider the fact that the Almighty and his Adversary may actually be two sides of the same coin?”

“Interesting theory,” Turing admitted. “Dual identity. Split personality. Multiple personality disorder. While I don’t subscribe to this theory, one never knows. Perhaps we’ll never know.”

“Just as we’ll never know why Satan and Erra allow me to continue with my experiments,” said Victor.

“That is because we are forever doomed to fail,” said Quasimodo.

“Screw you!” Victor told the hunchback. “A little more positive thinking around here is what we need. And this time I won’t fail!”

Quasimodo sat back and shook his head. “But all I am saying is—”

Turing interrupted the argument. “What we do know is that heaven is displeased with Satan, thus Erra and his Sibitti were sent to shake things up, and the Babylonian god has certainly done just that.”

“And it may very well be that our time has not yet come to pass when Erra turns his eyes upon us,” said Quasimodo.

A chill scurried down Victor’s spine, cooling his temper. “A most sobering thought.”

“Indeed,” said Turing. “But Ogre’s a fool if he thinks he can go up against Satan and Erra.”

“Foolish and stupid, da,” said Rasputin. “But loss of identity and consigned to hell in obscurity made him lose sight of all reason.”

Quasimodo rubbed his one good eye. “He is hungry for power. That is a certainty. Why should we care what he does and what happens to him?”

“Quasimodo’s right,” said Turing. “Now, I think we should set aside this discussion and return to the business at hand.”

Rasputin explained the plan he and Cagliostro had concocted. “Simple, no?”

“It should be,” Victor agreed. “But tell me, Grigori, how did you first come to hear about our experiments in cybernetic technology?”

Rasputin finished his drink, helped himself to another and said, “Quasimodo tell Madame Lenormand, who then confided in Cagliostro, who in turn tell me.”

A grim look darkened the hunchback’s malformed face, a look of pain and betrayal. “Cagliostro, ce bâtard!” he mumbled under his breath.

Victor frowned. Quasimodo’s infatuation with the woman had been of some concern to him lately. “Well, Grigori, since you’ve come to us with this generous offer of fifty-thousand diablos I shall overlook my crookback assistant’s slip of the tongue — this time.” He shot Quasimodo a warning glance.

A thin smile played about Quasimodo’s lips. “Merci, mes amis.”

Fifty-thousand in hot cash will more than cover the cost of what’s needed to complete the other cyborg, with enough left over to finance future experiments, Victor told himself. “We’ve always been honest and forthright in our dealings, you and I,” he said to Rasputin, “and I think we can call this a done deal.”

“Is good,” said Rasputin. “Ogre will want effective weapons, of course. Like those.” He pointed to where the Hellraiser-13 and the Grimm-666, also known as Satan’s Left Hand, hung on the wall.

“Naturally,” said Victor. “He can have those and plenty of ammunition, too.”

“Does Ogre have any idea what will be done to him?” Turing asked the Siberian monk.

“Da. His brain go in cyborg body.”

“Not only his brain but his heart, as well.”

Rasputin shrugged. “What Ogre does not know will not hurt him.”

“How soon will we get the money so we can purchase what we need to finish building the cyborg? And how soon do you wish to begin?” Victor asked.

“This day, money is yours. After that, when is convenient for you.”

Turing glanced at Victor and then asked Rasputin, “What if we fail and Ogre dashes off to the Mortuary?”

“Not problem. We keep money.”

“Sounds good to me!” Victor said, rubbing his hands together. “Quasimodo, looks like your hunch paid off,” he added with a wink.

“Now who is the one being droll?” asked the hunchback.

Turing raised his glass. “Gentlemen, shall we toast to a new age of demons and monsters?”

Victor took note of the fact that Quasimodo didn’t join in the toast. The hunchback just sat there in silence, stewing in his anger and jealousy.

*

Computers buzz. Electronics purr. Medical instruments hum. Machines grumble and whine and growl. Tiny arcs of lightning crackle. Transformers and generators spark and sizzle. Potions boil and bubble. Torches set in sconces chase shadows up and down the red brick walls of the laboratory. The sharp tang of ozone fills the air.

The carcass of the Orange Ogre lies on one of the two operating tables in Doctor Frankenstein’s laboratory. Ogre’s chest has been cracked wide open and the top of his skull removed. On the second operating table rests the shiny black, blue and red metal shell of a cyborg in repose. Victor and Turing have already completed the operation to remove Ogre’s heart and brain, transplant them into the cyborg’s body and connect everything to the intricate electronic components.

“So far, so good,” said Victor, keeping an eye on the EKG. “Heart is still functioning normally. No sign of dissolution or dissipation of the subject’s body.”

“Encephalograph shows alpha waves are active,” Turing added.

The Orange Ogre had been eager and ready to undergo the operation as soon as he, Rasputin, Cagliostro and Marie Lenormand arrived at Goblin Manor. Those three now sat on a bench along one wall, quietly watching the proceedings. Quasimodo sat in a helleather chair across from them, scowling at Cagliostro and Lenormand, who were holding hands like a pair of teenage lovers in hell. After administering the Hexoform to Ogre, which put him to sleep almost immediately, the hunchback had refused to take any further part in the experiment, preferring to sit and stare daggers at Cagliostro. The bogus Italian count ignored him and acted as if all was well in hell.

“Delta wave pattern is weakening. Alpha waves ascend to normal levels,” Turing announced, flipping toggles and switches left and right.

“Good!” said Victor. “Our patient awakens.”

Lenormand noticed Quasimodo glaring at her. “What’s your problem?”

“You — and him,” the hunchback told her, pointing to Cagliostro. “You deceived me, Marie. You betrayed me!”

“I did nothing of the sort,” she said.

Quasimodo’s knuckles cracked as he balled his hands into fists. “You made me believe you had affection for me, and I poured out my heart to you.”

“My dear Quasimodo, you deceived yourself. I never gave you any indication that I thought of you in that way. You are my customer. At best, we are just friends.”

“How can you say such things, Marie?” Quasimodo jumped to his feet. “How can you be the lover of this goombah charlatan?”

“Sit down before I knock you down, you ugly little monstre,” Cagliostro told Quasimodo, not bothering to rise from his seat.

“Quiet!” hissed Rasputin. “Ogre soon wakes.”

“But Marie, I love you!” Quasimodo said in anger and heartsick disappointment.

“Stop bothering our guests and get over here and assist me, Quasimodo,” Victor said. “And if you can’t behave yourself, please leave.”

Cursing in French, the Hunchback of Notre Dame smashed his chair with his fists, rushed out of the laboratory and slammed the outer door shut behind him.

“Where’s he off to?” Turing asked Victor.

Victor shrugged. “Who knows? But he’ll be back. He always comes back.”

The body of the cyborg began to stir.

“He awakens! He awakens!” Victor shouted in triumph.

Everyone fell silent as the cyborg once known as the Orange Ogre sat up on the table. Over ten-feet tall, the thing’s eyes glowed with violet fire.

“Keep an eye on Ogre’s body,” said Turing. “Hope it doesn’t evaporate.”

“It won’t,” Victor assured him. “This time we’ve succeeded. This time we’ve won!”

“Ogre, how you feel?” Rasputin asked.

“Fantastic!” The cyborg spoke in a more normal tone of voice than had its predecessor.

Turing gave Victor a thumbs-up. “Voice box working even better than before.”

“Of course, of course,” said Victor. “And the body still shows no signs of oncoming dissipation. We’ve managed to halt Reassignment!”

Cagliostro applauded. “Magnifico!”

“I wouldn’t have believed it had I not witnessed it,” said Lenormand.

“Ogreborg, that’s what you are,” Victor told Ogre while he and Turing removed the wires and cables connected to the cyborg’s body.

“Where are my weapons?” Ogreborg asked. He hopped off the table and stretched his mighty metal arms. “I want my weapons. I want them now.”

Victor walked over to the wall where the Hellraiser-13 and Grimm-666 were hanging and removed them. “These are very unique weapons. Each one is equipped with a thousand-round clip of small but extremely powerful ammunition.” Handing the weapons to Ogreborg, he added, “There are plenty of extra clips in the metal pockets of your legs.”

“Nice feel to them,” said Ogreborg, testing the weight of the weapons. “Now I can get even with all those who’ve scorned and ridiculed me.”

“You do realize that the act of seeking vengeance in hell is pointless, don’t you?” Turing said to the cyborg.

“If you dust your enemies they will only go to the Mortuary,” said Cagliostro.

“And there they will be reassigned,” Lenormand added.

“We’ll see about that.” Ogreborg walked up to the dirty mirror hanging on the wall and stared at his reflection. Then he turned to face the others. “I am the Colossus of Hell! Look upon me and weep, you turd burglars!”

Rasputin’s mouth fell open and his eyes went wide. “Ogre, have you gone mad?”

Ogreborg laughed at him “I am Ogreborg, the awesome and frightening, and there will be no others like me in hell!”

With that, he fired one mini grenade from the Hellraiser-13 at Turing and Victor’s banks of computers, machinery and medical instruments. Cagliostro threw himself upon Lenormand to shield her from the blast. Victor and Turing jumped out of the way only a heartbeat before the lab equipment exploded into a burning and smoking ruin. But Rasputin didn’t move quickly enough and a huge piece of charred metal sliced his head in two; a moment later his body glimmered and vanished from the lab.

Turing rose to his feet, shouting, “You son of a bitch!” He drew his Bolt .45 from its holster but before he could even take aim, the Colossus of Hell squeezed off several rounds from his Grimm-666, cutting Turing’s body in half.

“Alan!” Victor cried.

The Bolt .45 flew from Turing’s hand and landed on the floor only a hellisecond before his body shimmered, dissolved and began its journey to the Mortuary.

“Who else wants a taste of this?” Ogreborg asked. Then, laughing hysterically, he ran towards the outer door, smashed through it and raced away.

Victor climbed to his feet while Cagliostro helped Lenormand to stand. “Poor Alan,” he lamented. “I hope the Undertaker doesn’t mess him up too much. This is his first time.”

“Ah, but Rasputin . . . who knows what will be done to him in that morgue of mayhem and mutilation,” said Cagliostro, sadly shaking his head. “Are you all right, il mio amore?”

Lenormand nodded. “Yes, Joey. I’m fine. Now what?”

“The Orange Ogre has finally gone over the top,” said Victor. “We have to stop him.”

“But how, Signor Frankenstein?” Cagliostro asked.

Victor had no idea what to do. He felt lost and helpless without Turing and Quasimodo. “I have no fucking idea, Giuseppe.”

*

I am strong. I am unstoppable. No motherfucker is ever gonna fuck with me again!

Ogreborg runs amok throughout the Golem Heights, destroying buildings and vehicles, and blasting damned souls to smithereens with his Hellraiser-13 grenade launcher. Hundreds of hellizens flee from him, screaming and pushing each other out of the way as they try to escape. The damned cry out in agony as bullets from the cyborg’s Grimm-666 rip them to pieces. He doesn’t know and doesn’t care what becomes of the lost souls he dusts. All he desires is the destruction of every resident of New Hell. He’s having his cake and enjoying the taste of it. Each time he reloads his weapons, more damned fools explode into shimmering particles that dissipate and fade away.

I don’t give a shit if they end up in the Mortuary. I’ll just keep dusting them until there’s nothing left of them to be recycled!

Ogreborg leaves a path of chaos and destruction in his wake as he makes his way down to Port Boil and Vile River. Buildings crumble and necroflesh bodies burst into glittering atoms that quickly disappear. Vehicles burn, windows shatter, pavement buckles and cracks. Towers and bridges collapse as scores of hellions are slaughtered and then vanish from the filth-laden streets. Ogreborg is a juggernaut of explosive firepower that terrorizes and tears apart the bodies and souls of the damned.

Must find Satan. Must find Erra. Must destroy them both!

That’s his mantra. That’s all he thinks about as he continues his rampage through the streets of Port Boil. He is now a mad, near mindless automaton bent on only two things: destruction and revenge.

Heading around the bend of Dead Man’s Curve, Ogreborg spotted some panic-stricken hellizens fleeing down the dead-end byway of Crud Alley. Violet, robotic eyes blazing with vengeance, he stopped at the mouth of the alley and opened fire with his weapons, blasting men and women into glittering atoms. The alley turned into a ruin of fire, black smoke and burning debris.

When he spotted a group of men who reminded him of the gang that had beaten him, he turned his gunsights on them and fired away like a kid at a shooting gallery.

Bastards! That’ll teach you!

“Drop your weapons and turn around slowly with your hands in the air,” he heard, a commanding voice from behind.

Slowly, deliberately, Ogreborg turned to face a platoon of Uncubi aiming their Hexum-9 assault rifles at him. “And what if I don’t?” he asked the leader of the Uncubi death squad.

The Uncubus didn’t waste any more words and immediately opened fire on Ogreborg. The other Uncubi followed suit, their weapons popping with explosive sounds. Bullets ripped through the air and ricocheted off the metallic body of the cyborg, causing not one dent or scratch. Ogreborg laughed maniacally and retaliated, shredding the New Breed demons to pieces with rounds of bullets and exterminating them with grenades until nothing was left but red smoke.

“Fucking snowflakes!” he whooped, reloading his weapons and continuing on his wave of terror and destruction through the riverfront town of Port Boil.

*

Victor, Cagliostro and Marie Lenormand follow devastation left in the wake of Ogreborg’s blitzkrieg. Fire and destruction point them in the right direction. Plague Zombies burn and crumble into sand and ashes. The fatally-wounded cry out in agony and then collapse into quickly evaporating particles of glittering necroflesh that Victor knew would soon wink out and be reconstituted in the Mortuary to await Reassignment. Cars and trucks collide and crash into buildings, pedestrians are run over as the drivers disintegrate the moment bullets or grenades take them down. Other vehicles speed off in the opposite direction to escape the wanton destruction unleashed by Ogreborg.

Port Boil swiftly turns into a Biblical hellscape of fire, torment and madness.

Wreckage of all kinds is strewn everywhere. Body parts lie scattered about or fly through the air before they shimmer and vanish. Victor wishes Quasimodo was by his side as he and his two companions run through the streets, ducking and dodging the shrapnel and debris flying all about them. Unlike every other damned soul who flees from Ogreborg, they head the other way, hot on the trail of the blood-crazed cyborg. Finally, they reach the banks of the Vile River, where hundreds of boats, wharf-side taverns, warehouses, homes and necroflesh bodies are burning in a conflagration that would make Dante proud.

“He must run out of the ammunition sooner or later,” said Cagliostro.

“Not with the ammo clips I designed,” said Victor. “This can go on for days!”

“Your experiment has proven to be a great success, Doctor,” said Lenormand. “The fact that he’s still running free to cause havoc and destruction shows that his heart and brain, even his body, have not been whisked off to the Mortuary. You cheated Reassignment.”

“Yes, but at what cost?” Victor asked. “Once again I have created a monster that has gone on a terrible rampage.”

“Then how do we stop such a mostro orribile as this?” Cagliostro wondered.

Quasimodo unexpectedly reappeared, carrying Turing’s discarded Bolt .45 in one hand. “Docteur!” he called out.

Victor and the others were surprised to see him. “Quasimodo! I’m so happy to see you!”

“I come back to help if I can, mes amis.”

Pointing to the gun in the hunchback’s hand, Victor said, “With that? Against Ogreborg?”

“No, this gun, it is for them.” Quasimodo raised the pistol, aimed it at Cagliostro and fired off two quick shots: the first one drilled a hole through the Italian’s forehead while the second tore the top of his skull clean off. Cagliostro’s body abruptly dissolved into glistening particles and quickly faded away.

“Joey! Joey!” Lenormand cried, falling to her knees.

Quasimodo then turned the weapon on her.

“No, no,” she begged. “Please don’t do this, ma chérie.”

“You betrayed me!” You lied to me!” Quasimodo growled. “When we had dinner at Hell’s Kitchen you said you loved me!”

“I did. I mean, I do love you, dear Quasimodo. Just not in the way you want.”

“No, you conned me, and that, ma petite pute, I cannot forgive. Revenge may be futile but it is no less sweet.” Quasimodo raised the pistol and pointed it at Lenormand.

“No, not the Mortuary. Anything but that!” she pleaded.

“Quasimodo — no!” Victor shouted.

Click! Click!

The Bolt .45 jammed.

Lenormand fainted and collapsed.

A gust of wind howled and blew wildly through the ruined streets of Port Boil. The crimson vault hanging over New Hell trembled. Lightning flashed and thunder shook the firmament of the riverside town as damned souls screamed and ran seeking shelter.

At that moment Ogreborg emerged from the smoke and fire of destruction and marched towards Victor, Quasimodo and the unconscious Lenormand. “Are you here to join me or join all the other assholes I’ve destroyed?” Though his weapons were silent, they were smoking hot.

“This is insane, Ogreborg,” said Victor. “Your rampage has caused panic and destruction. You have accomplished nothing here expect to make even more enemies for yourself.”

“Screw all that! I’m in charge now and soon I’ll control New Hell and every other hell in this fucking netherworld!” cried Ogreborg, raising and firing his weapons into the air.

And then, in the blood-red sky above them, Victor saw a beautiful but terrifying figure swooping down upon them on invisible wings. Draped in dusty raiment, the dreadful figure drew his flashing sword as he descended lower and lower . . . a lone Sibitti wearing a cloak of human skin decorated with braided scalps. People wailed and fled in terror, but Ogreborg didn’t notice, his attention focused on Victor and the fiery destruction of Port Boil.

“Nothing to say for yourself, you piece of shit?” he asked Victor.

Fighting his fear of Ogreborg and the Sibitti, Doctor Frankenstein stood his ground. “I know you, Ogre. I know all about you.”

Ogreborg took a step closer to Victor. “What did you say?”

Knowing how Ogre’s loss of memory and identity tormented him more than anything else in hell, Victor told him, “I know who you are and who you were, you two-bit has-been.”

“You know me?”

“Yes! And if you have the balls to discover the truth, look to the sky. Look, I say!”

Almost reluctantly, Ogreborg looked up and saw the Sibitti hovering in the sky not far above him. “Where’s the rest of your terrorist cell, you loser?” shouted the cyborg. When the Sibitti did not answer Ogreborg aimed his weapons at Erra’s #2 Personified Weapon. “I am Ogreborg, the Colossus of Hell. Prepare to be annihilated. Resistance is—”

The Sibitti’s sword flashed once and a sizzling, white bolt of lightning struck Ogreborg, blasting him into a jigsaw puzzle of fiery pieces that the wind scattered in all directions.

Victor closed his eyes and stood waiting for the inevitable. If this be it, then sobeit.

But a second lightning bolt from that terrible swift sword never struck. Instead, flapping wings stirred and a powerful wind slapped him in the face. When he opened his eyes the Sibitti was gone just as quickly as he had arrived.

Then, from down the street, Victor saw the Unknown Poet leading a squad of armed Uncubi towards him. “Mister Up!” he shouted in surprise.

“That was close and you were lucky, Victor,” said the hetman of the Uncubi. “But you must leave here soon before the rest of the Sibitti finish whatever business they have in Ki-gal and decide to return. Be grateful that only one was sent to deal with the monster you created.”

“Did Ogreborg obliterate all those souls?” Victor asked.

“Obliteration is not yours or any damned soul’s provence,” said Mister Up. “His weapons merely sent them to the Mortuary.”

“What about Ogreborg?”

“Obliteration or Oblivion. That I do not know.”

“And your people?”

“We Uncubi may be demons, but we are not native to hell. We are still damned souls. My people will be reassigned.”

“The Undertaker and Gorgonous will certainly have their hands and claws full.”

“Indeed, my friend. And if you and Quasimodo wish to escape Erra’s wrath and remain in good graces with His Satanic Majesty, the Mortuary is the safest place for you to be. I’d advise you both to get your asses over to Slab A — and pronto. There is much work to keep you busy and out of mischief for a long time.” The Uncubus’ strange-looking mouth in his pointed, Pteranodon-like face smiled. “And please, Victor . . . no more robots in hell. Okay?”

Victor was crestfallen. “But I like to build things!”

“Then buy yourself some Stinkin’ Logs or a set of Killegos,” Mister Up told him. “Beware, Victor. I know that look on your face. I know your brain is already concocting some grand new experiment. Just be careful. For now, you amuse and entertain Satan and may even serve some purpose of his. Erra himself may be tolerant of you for his own reasons, but for how long?”

The Uncubus shrugged his sharp-boned and crooked shoulders. “Neither of them confide in me. But I think part of your punishment is to suffer endless failure. And that may be why, for now, you’ve been left alone to do pretty much as you please. Just don’t press your luck too far.”

“I shall take your advice to heart,” said Victor. But he’d never give up.  As dogged and as fearless as ever, the infamous doctor remained undaunted and determined to find a way out of hell. That was his mission in the afterlife.

Bidding Victor farewell, Mister Up and his squad of Uncubi took their leave. Victor studied the crimson vault that teased and tormented the damned with the light and promise of Paradise. As of yet, no sign of Erra and his Seven Sibitti could be seen.

I guess Quasimodo and I should hightail it back to the Mortuary for another tour of duty there, once again helping to reassign all those poor souls Ogreborg took down.

Quasimodo walked over to Victor, carrying the unconscious Marie Lenormand over his shoulder like a sack of potatoes. “So we must return to the Mortuary to work again?”

“I’m afraid so, my friend,” Victor told him. “Things could be a lot worse, of course.” He nodded to Lenormand. “What are you going to do with her?”

“I am taking her to the Vile River, where she can sink or swim or be eaten by whatever lives in such filthy water. Tell me, Victor . . . what you said to Ogre? Do you truly know who he is and who he was?”

Victor winked. “What do you think?”

The Hunchback of Notre Dame laughed. “Meet you in the Mortuary.” Then he scurried down to the riverbank with Lenormand, shouting “Sanctuary! Sanctuary!”