Surface Detail

And there was even a humour to it, too, she’d decided. It was the humour of children, of adolescence – determined to appal the adults or to take something to such an extreme you shocked even your peers – it was the humour of wringing every last conceivable shred of double-meaning or fanciful connection out of every even remotely misconstruable subject, every mention of anything that could be seen as having anything whatsoever to do with sexuality, bodily waste or any other function of simple, matter-of-fact creaturality or biochemicalness, but it was still humour, of a sort.

When Prin went through and she did not, when the blue glowing doorway she had been only very peripherally aware of rejected her and bounced her back into the groaning confines of the mill, she had lain on the sweated boards of the ramp, watching the blue glowing mist evaporate and the surface of the doorway turn to what looked like grey metal. She could hear the predator-demons howling and cursing and arguing. They were further up, on the level where Prin – in the form of an even larger demon – had brushed them aside moments earlier, before launching himself – and her – at the glowing doorway. She got the impression that they hadn’t yet noticed her lying there.

She lay still. They would find her, and probably very soon, she knew that, but for these precious few moments she was alone, undisturbed, yet to come to the attention of these most dedicated persecutors.

Prin was gone.

He had tried to take them both through to whatever was on the other side of the blue glowing doorway, but only he had got through. She had been left behind. Or he had left her behind. She wondered whether to feel sorry for him or not. Probably not. If he was right and there really was some other, pre-existing, non-tormenting life to be found beyond the doorway, then she hoped that he had found it. If he had gone into oblivion, then that was something to celebrate too, for oblivion, if it existed as a real, achievable possibility, meant an end to suffering.

As likely, though, she thought, was that he had simply gone to another part of here, another and possibly worse, more terrible quarter of reality, of what he had chosen to call Hell. Perhaps she had been the lucky one, getting to stay behind. There would be more torment, more pain and abasement in store for her, she knew that, but perhaps what now awaited Prin was even worse. She didn’t like to think about what would happen to her, now, but thinking about what might be happening or about to happen to Prin was even worse. She did not let herself shy away from it; she made herself think about it. If you thought about it, if you embraced it, then the revelation you might in time be faced with – of what had happened to him, what had been done to him – would lose some of its power and its ability to shock.

She wondered if she would ever see him again. She wondered if she would want to, given what they might do to him. He had disobeyed the rules of this place, the rules they lived by; he had gone against the very law of Hell, and his punishment would be extreme.

So might hers, of course.

She heard one of the demons say something. She didn’t understand exactly what had been said but it had sounded like an exclamation, like an expression of surprise. She knew then that she had been seen. She heard and felt crashing, iron-shod paws clattering down the ramp towards her. They stamped up to right beside her head.

She was hauled upright by both her trunks. She tried to keep her hand-pads over her face but she was shaken, and her body’s own weight tore their grip free. She caught a glimpse of a demon’s wide, furred face, its two great eyes staring at her, then she shut her eyes tightly.

The demon shouted in her face. “Didn’t get through? That’s bad!” His breath smelled of rotting meat. He marched up the slope, dragging her behind him. He was roaring to the others. Look what he’d found!

They took turns raping her while they discussed what to do to really make her suffer. In Hell, the seed of demons burned like acid and generally brought with it parasites, worms, gangrene and tumours, as well as the possibility of the conception of something that would eat its way out when the time came to be born. That conception could equally well take place in a male; a womb was not required and the demons were not fussy.

She found the pain astounding, the humiliation and degradation absolute.