Damned

  Pity the poor demon with but its single strategy to win. In the same handicapped way Jane Eyre must remain meek and stoic, this demonic Baal knows only one way to exist: by being fearsome. While I exist plastic to change and adapt, tailoring my battle plan to each new moment, Baal can never dissolve an enemy into helpless laughter, nor charm a foe by using extraordinary beauty. Therefore, when we neglect to fear such a brittle monstrosity, we render it powerless.

  Issuing a war whoop far more Grace Poole than Jane Eyre, I launch myself boldly and squarely toward Baal's porcine thorax. In accordance with my long-ago, school-mandated rape-prevention training, I execute a two-pronged offensive against the demon's stony eyes and tender pork genitals, gouging the former and stomping my stiletto heels upon the latter. Paying no heed to the until-now careful preservation of my neat and clean appearance, I snatch up a handful of the corroded razor blades which pave the ground and commence to slash and claw, my efforts bringing forth a flood of piggish blood. The stench of the demon's exposed, ruptured viscera is the reek of the charnel house. A fog of spouting slaughterhouse blood and killing-floor screams ensues. The offal flies in wide arcs, Grand Guignol style, and even the Hellish orange sky is racked by Baal's squealing protest.

  It's a little-known fact, but demons are only slightly more difficult to defeat than despots or tyrants. Despite their immense size and fearsome appearance, demons lack any actual self-confidence. All of their advantage lies in bluster, hideous deformity, and putrid stink, and once those defenses are breached a demon has very little with which to back them up. The great pride of a demon is also its weakness. Like all bullies, at the point where it finds itself losing face, a demon most often takes flight.

  What little that was left of Madison Spencer, movie-star scion, is lost in the subsequent savage flurry. Battling alone against the evil Baal, I am not unaware of the sullied hordes who, from a distance, witness my bold savagery. Assaulted with the unrelenting volley of my infantile slaps and girlish pokes, my churlish vocal taunts, the infuriating flurry of my wet willies and Indian burns, this fiercest of demons cries in panicked frustration. Subjected to my fearsome barrage of painful noogies, then my lightning-fast attack of titty twisters, my entire arsenal of grade-school insults, Baal wrestles to free himself. Following a particularly violent wedgie inflicted upon him, the demon unfurls his wrinkled, leathery wings and flees the scene of battle. Those batlike wings beating, beating the black smoke and clouds of houseflies, Baal races to vanish over the far orange horizon.

  Thus I'm left standing alone at the sealed gates of headquarters but for only a moment. I savor the glory of being bathed, soaked, drenched with warm blood which is not my own.

  Even before said blood can cool, a sole voice calls down from a window placed high in the locked battlements. A woman's voice calls, "Maddy? Is that you?" Little larger than the face which fills it, the window is situated so high that it takes a moment for my eyes to locate it, but there hovers the visage of an old woman, Mrs. Trudy Marenetti, most recently from Columbus, Ohio, who arrived in Hell by way of pancreatic cancer. She calls, "Hurray for little Madison!"

  From another distant window, another face, that of Mr. Halmott, victim of congestive heart failure and Boise, Idaho, echoes the shout, "Hurray for little Maddy!"

  From other windows, other battlements and turrets, a multitude of faces trumpet the name of Madison Spencer. Of these, some I recognize, but others I do not, for I've spoken to them only over the telephone, counseling them not to fear their imminent deaths. During my absence, these souls have been arriving in droves, transforming Hell into a veritable Ellis Island of new arrivals, shocked but not devastated by their demise, more curious than frightened, in fact eager to shed their former failing lives and embark upon some new enterprise. It would seem that I've recruited them. All of them, every one of these faces lauds me from their far-flung windows in the walls of Hell. They demand the gates be thrown open so that they might embrace me... their new hero.

  Suddenly the very air is filled with sweetness as dead people shower me with Sugar Babies and malted-milk balls. In tribute they toss a sugary blizzard of Pez and Root Beer Barrels.

  My army coalesces once more, and the unmistakable sounds of bolts and chains can be heard from within the barred doors. By fractions of a degree, by hairbreadths, the two ponderous gates begin to swing aside, offering a glimpse of the headquarters within. Behind me, the thunderous troops rush forward to convey me upon their burly, murderous shoulders and carry me, victorious, into the besieged city. My hordes begin to plunder the candy coffers of Hades. Looting that treasury of Pixy Stix, Atomic Fire-Bails, and York Peppermint Patties.

  With the gates not yet a shoulders' width apart, a figure appears from the interior, a young woman with nice breasts and good hair; wearing beat-up fake Manolo Blahnik shoes, dime-size cubic zirconium earrings, a counterfeit Coach bag slung over one arm, there stands—Babette.

  Looking at me, with Caligula's shriveled balls worn on my belt, next to that Hitler's nasty mustache hanging like a tiny scalp, my assorted bloodstained daggers and bludgeons, then wrinkling her button nose, Babette says, "You never could accessorize for shit."

  No doubt she still wants to transform me into some Whorey Vanderwhore version of an overly made up Ally Sheedy.

  Stepping forward, I say, "Do me a favor?"

  The multitudes surrounding us wait in pensive silence while I withdraw the folded polygraph test from the hip pocket of my bloodied skort. That cryptic report concerning my views on gay marriage and stem cell research and women's rights, I place this, the final scored version of my test, into Babette's outstretched hand and say, "Did I pass, or what?"

  And with the chipped white nail polish of her manicure, Babette slides the test results from their manila envelope and begins to read.

  XXXI.

  Are you there, Satan? It's me, Madison. My mom used to say, "Madison, you're a worrier." Meaning: I fret over everything. Meaning: EVERYTHING. Now I'm worried that I've won. My ascent to power seems to have been too easy. In my life, in my parents' lives, the rewards have come with so little struggle. The homes in Dubai and Singapore and Brentwood. The afterlife goes on; however; it's not quite death as usual. Something seems fishy, but I can't put my finger on it.

  Gone is the previous Maddy Spencer, she of the sterling posture and finishing-school manners. That winsome me has been declared extinct. True, once more I am seated before the console of my telemarketing station, but the headset rests canted atop my head to allow for the pearl-studded de Medicis crown, and my demeanor is forever altered, for the better or not.

  Instead of wheedling the chronically ill, diplomatically and nonthreateningly, with my assurance about the liability of Hades—is there such a word as "die-ability"?— espousing all the wonderful opportunities offered by the afterlife, the new me browbeats those who procrastinate, those lollygaggers who postpone their deaths. Rather than nurture and assure, the aggressive new me harangues the dying who have the misfortune to engage me in telephone conversation. Yes, I'm thirteen years old and dead and doing child labor in Hell—but at least I'm not whining and crying about my situation. In contrast, the people to whom I talk are so endlessly attached to their wealth and achievements, their homes and loved ones and physical bodies. So attached to their stupid fear. These failing strangers with their stage-four brain tumors and kidney failure, they've put a lifetime into perfecting themselves, practicing and fine-tuning every nuance of their identity, and now all of this effort is about to be wasted. In all honesty, they irk the bejesus out of me.

  The previous Madison Spencer would bother to hold their frightened hand, to calm and comfort them. Who I am now, however, I tell them to cry me a stinking shit river and fall down dead, already.

  On occasion, a division or company of my stained hordes, the armies I've inherited from Gilles de Rais or Hitler or Idi Amin will stop by, begging for a work assignment, some large-scale task to perform on my behalf.

  More often,
the people I've coached into Hell stop by to pay their respects. The just-arrived dead still smelling of funeral carnations and formaldehyde, these immigrant souls sport the troweled-on cosmetics and overly primped hairdos that only an undertaker would inflict, and only a corpse would tolerate. These new arrivals, they all feel compelled to talk through their terrible death experience, and I just let them chatter away. More often than not, I direct them to one of the numerous talk-therapy sessions I've launched, my new hope-aholics recovery groups, a twelve-step peer-supported cliché. But with our high graduation rate and low recidivism it would do Dante

  Alighieri proud. After a couple weeks of complaining and self-mourning—the usual railing over lost luxury items and surviving enemies and wrongs left unavenged, plus the typical gloating about past awards and accomplishments— most people get their fill and decide to move forward with their eternal existence. Crude as my methods might appear, my dead friends are not among those people who linger for centuries in their soiled cages cursing their new reality. The dead whom I coach prove to be remarkably well-adjusted and productive. Among them, Richard Volk who died of blunt-force trauma caused by an automobile accident last week in Missoula, Montana, this week he's leading the former battalions of Genghis Khan in their current campaign to collect all the discarded cigarette butts which inevitably end up here. Here also is Hazel Kunzeler, who succumbed to hemophilia two weeks ago in Jacksonville, Florida; she's now commanding former Roman legions in their latest me-assigned mission to propagate a billion flowering rosebushes in the space now occupied by the Lake of Tepid Bile. Obviously this constitutes a blatant make-work project—so sue me—but the effort keeps everyone occupied for contented aeons, and even a small measure of success improves the overall atmosphere of the underworld. What's of most importance is how these • assignments deflect would-be hangers-on and allow me to focus on my own projects.

  Yes, I might be a dead child strangled in a poorly understood sex game, but to me the glass is most times half-full. Despite my optimism there remains no sign of Goran—not that I've been scouring the afterlife searching for him in a desperate, lonely stalker way.

  At the limits of my peripheral vision, Babette comes walking in my direction, my salvation polygraph test clasped in her chipped white fingernails.

  Into my telephone headset, I ask a middle-aged woman dying in Austin, Texas, "Are you familiar with the old Reno-style divorces?" I explain how, decades ago, one simply took a six-week vacation to establish residency in Nevada in order to file for a no-fault dissolution of marriage. Well, I tell her to catch the next flight to Oregon, where they have legalized assisted suicide. She won't even have to buy a round-trip plane ticket, and she can be dead by this coming weekend. "Book yourself into some luxury hotel in downtown Portland," I say, "get a massage, and call room service for an overdose of Phenobarbital. It's that easy. Make a real junket out of it......"

  Sitting here, talking on the telephone, my fingers crossed, I swear all of this is true. Honest Injun. My workstation, what would pass as my office cubicle on earth, is arrayed with my power souvenirs, the various murder weapons and body parts and symbols of imperial power. Staring me in the face, pinned to my cork bulletin board, the dried monkey patch of the Hitler mustache does not inspire honesty In my peripheral vision, Babette proceeds ever closer, bearing the inevitable results of my test.

  Into my telephone, I assure this dying Texas person that her permanent record is open on the desk in front of me, and it shows she's been pretty much on the fast track to Hell since the age of twenty-three, when she committed adultery. Despite the fact that she'd been married to her husband for barely two weeks, she engaged in sexual intercourse with a local mail carrier, largely because he reminded her of a former beau. Upon the heels of that revelation, the woman gasps. She convulses into racking coughs, struggling to ask, "How'd you know that?"

  In addition, it would appear that she honked her automobile horn one too many times. According to divine law, I explain, each human being is allowed to honk no more than five hundred times over the course of a lifetime. One honk beyond that number, regardless of circumstances, results in an automatic condemnation to Hell—suffice to say all taxicab drivers are Hellhound. A similar unbreakable law applies to discarded cigarette butts. The first hundred are permitted, but any dropped butts beyond that number result in eternal damnation with no hope for recourse. It seems she's also in violation of this regulation. It's all spelled out, here, printed in almost illegible dot-matrix black and white in her personal file.

  By now Babette has arrived at my elbow, where she stands, tapping the toe of one faux Blahnik, twisting her wrist to look pointedly at the time on her long-dead Swatch.

  To stall for time I hold up one straightened index finger, mouthing the word wait, while into the telephone I tell the Texas lady there's nothing she can do in the brief time she has left on earth which will earn her a place in Heaven. She needs to consider her loved ones, to stop hogging the spotlight and allow the people who love her to go back to their own precious, brief, messed-up lives. Yes, she should warn them about not honking their automobile horns and not discarding cigarette butts, but then she ought to move on.

  I tell her, "Die already." My finger hovering above the control board, I say, "Hold, please... ," and punch the button. I twist in my seat to face Babette, my eyebrows arched in expectation. My entire face a silent, begging, Please.

  Babette offers the report. She taps a chipped fingernail on a number at the bottom of a long column of faint dot-matrix numbers, saying, "Just from your overall culpability score..." She says, "This number, here." Handing me the sheet of paper, Babette says, "You need to file for an appeal." With that, she turns on one battered high heel and begins to walk away.

  My latest Hell recruit, the horn-honking, cigarette-strewing gal slowly dying in Texas, she's still blinking, blinking on hold.

  Calling after Babette, I ask what she means by appeal.

  In response, without looking back, Babette shouts, already four... five... six workstations away; still receding, she says, "You shouldn't even be here......"

  From even farther gone, Babette shouts, "There's been an official screw-up." Loud enough for everyone to overhear, she shouts, "Double-check the numbers yourself." She shouts, "Because, right this minute, you ought to be in Heaven."

  Up and down the infinite row of telemarketers, faces twist to see mine. A lingering crowd of mercenaries and fresh-off-the-boat Hell newbies wait within earshot, their faces slack with confusion. One of their small group steps forward, not a dastardly blood-drenched pirate, nor an aged person attired in her best funeral suit of clothes. No, this stranger stands approximately my height. A reasonable guess would place her age at thirteen. This stranger could almost pass as the earlier me, the pristine, well-behaved Madison wearing sensible shoes and a tweedy ensemble carefully chosen to mask future soiling. In contrast to my current self, this small stranger presents herself with no dried demonic blood on her hands and face, her hair neatly combed and meticulously arranged. Offering a dainty hand of nicety-nice pink fingernails, this girl says, "Madison Spencer?" She meets my gaze with calm, unblinking eyes, her perfect double row of white teeth bound in stainless-steel braces, saying, "You win......"

  At that, the girl's dainty hands dip into the pockets of her tweed skirt, and then the pockets of her cardigan sweater, and she brings forth candy. Seven, eight, nine candy bars. Ten full-sized Milky Way bars, my new best friend—my first best friend, ever—this dead girl offers these sweet chocolaty prizes to me.

  XXXII.

  Are you there, Satan? It's me, Madison. How miserably hypocritical, you might say, but no sooner am I offered a chance to flee Hell than I yearn to stay. Few families hold their relations as closely as do prisons. Few marriages sustain the high level of passion that exists between criminals and those who seek to bring them to justice. It's no wonder the Zodiac Killer flirted so relentlessly with the police. Or that Jack the Ripper courted and baited detec
tives with his—or her—coy letters. We all wish to be pursued. We all long to be desired. At this point I've been in Hell for a longer period of time than I've ever spent in any of my earthly homes, in Durban, in London, in Manila. Worse than feeling merely conflicted, I'm miserable at the thought of leaving.

  In order to keep the various bloodthirsty armies occupied and out of my hair, I've ordered them to capture and paint all the noxious bats of Hell red and blue, to pass for cardinals and bluebirds. The industrious butchers previously employed by Pol Pot and Madame Defarge, I've dispatched them to fabricate bright butterfly wings out of colorful construction paper and glitter, then glue these false wings to the real wings of our ever-present houseflies. Not only does this spruce up the normally dismal atmosphere of the underworld, it also prevents what would be the inevitable clashes between Mongolian hordes and Nazi storm troopers and Egyptian charioteers. Most important, it keeps them all busy and allows me to spend my time touring Emily around, eating Milky Ways, and discussing boys.

  Throughout our relaxed amble, I remark on possible improvements to the landscape, a flowering dogwood here, a reflecting pool there, perhaps an aviary of colorful parrots, each of which Emily dutifully makes note of on a clipboard she carries.

  The potentially needy mobs of newly dead, those anxious souls I've enrolled in dying and relocating to Hell, I've delegated those folks to various other reclamation projects. Really, I could pass as no less than the FDR of the afterlife, what with all the dams I've decreed be build across rivers of scalding blood. I've ordered other work teams to dig channels and drain expansive marshes of rank perspiration; thanks to me the ancient Sweat Swamps of Hell no longer exist. Lost souls who logged entire lifetimes in the study and practice of civil and structural engineering, those people are thrilled for the opportunity to put their existing skills to use. The rolling hills of semicoagulated mucus have been leveled. And an entire gulag of happily damned slave laborers does nothing except fashion false water lily blossoms from crepe paper and float their products on the surface of the Shit Lake.