Damned

  There I stood with Hitler lying prone at my feet. To be honest, I really didn't want his boots. Nor did I feel the slightest desire to lay claim to his necktie or silly armband. His belt? His gun? Some little piece of Nazi costume jewelry, a tin-plate eagle or a skull? No, good taste seemed to preclude taking any readily apparent portion of his costume.

  And, yes, I might be a formerly nicety-nice girl with no qualms about using the words preclude or qualms, and no hesitation to coldcock a fascist tyrant, but I continue to be very particular about the manner in which I accessorize my very bland wardrobe.

  From the far edge of the crowd, Archer's voice shouts, "Don't be a pussy!" He shouts, "Take the damned mustache!"

  Of course, it's the one talisman which bears the entire identity of this madman. His mustache—a tiny scalp to hang from my belt—it represents something without which Hitler would no longer be Hitler. Bracing the heel of one sensible loafer firmly against his neck, I lean over and entwine my fingers through the coarse, pubic-feeling fringe of the tiny lip hairs. His breathing feels warm and damp against my hands. Even as I brace myself for one gigantic pull, one herculean yank, Hitler's eyelashes flutter and his eyes pin me with their focused rage. Stomping my foot into his throat, I jerk, pulling the short hairs with all of my strength—and Hitler screams.

  The crowd recoils, retreating a step.

  Once again, I fall backward, my arms pinwheeling but still clutching my prize.

  Adolf Hitler holds his face wrapped in both hands, blood pouring from between his fingers; his bellowing words sound garbled and choked, the sleeves of his uniform running with blood, so soaked that the vivid red erases the dull swastika banded around his arm.

  Cupped within the palm of my hand curls the warm little mustache, torn away, still attached to a pale, thin crescent of upper lip.

  XXIX.

  Are you there, Satan? It's me, Madison. My taste for power continues to grow, as does my ability to accrue it.

  The diamond ring, Archer explained, came from Elizabeth Bathory, a Hungarian countess who died and has been imprisoned within her own grimy, hellish cage since 1614. Always a beauty, the Countess Bathory had once struck a servant girl, who bled from the assault, and where the spilled blood accidentally splashed on the countess it seemed to rejuvenate her royal skin. Based on this clearly anecdotal evidence, Elizabeth Bathory went nuts for this new skin-care ritual, immediately hiring and exsanguinating some six hundred servant girls at a lightning pace, so that she might continually bathe in their warm blood. These days, the countess looks terrible; she sits slobbering and comatose with frustration and denial, unable to transition from a bloodthirsty Miss Whorey Von Whoreski.

  Armed with the ring of vampirish Elizabeth, I could more easily knock out Adolf Hitler. And now, armed with his tiny fascist mustache, I banished the Nazi superman. Of course, once someone is sentenced to Hell, it becomes nearly impossible to discard him further. My solution was to send him someplace where I myself never planned to venture. My initial selection was the Sea of Insects; however, with additional consideration I revised my choice to the Swamp of Partial-birth Abortions. There it is, in the hell of Hell, that boggy landscape of nightmares where stewed infants simmer beneath an enormous movie screen, an inescapable billboard, upon which The English Patient plays in a never-ending Technicolor loop, that's where Herr Hitler resides, shorn of mustache and identity.

  Deprived of their demagogue, Hitler's mindless drones inevitably fell into step behind Archer and me, traversing the Dandruff Desert in our footsteps while we continued our journey Of course, I requested they discard their distasteful armbands, and to underscore my demands I did brandish the tiny profane mustache.

  We'd ventured no farther than the Lake of Tepid Bile— Archer and I and our band of newfound sycophants—when we encountered a statuesque woman holding court amid a retinue of bowing, scraping attendants. A great ill-gotten heap of Almond Joys served as her throne, and the members of her court formed concentric circles surrounding the hem of her brocaded and embroidered gown. The woman, while mad with a manic, eye-rolling hysteria, wore a coronet or a diadem of pearls perched atop the nest of her elaborately plaited hair. Even as her court kowtowed at her feet, her wan smile fell upon Archer and me and promptly vanished.

  As our traveling party neared this new sight, Archer leaned close to my ear. His Ramones concert T-shirt pungent with the stench of his perspiration, he whispered, "Catherine de Medicis..."

  If you asked my father for advice he'd tell you, "The secret to being a successful comedian is to never stop talking until you hear someone laugh." Meaning: Persevere. Meaning: Be determined. Make just one person laugh; then leverage that person and that joke into more laughter. As some people decide you're funny, increasing numbers of people will begin to agree.

  The tiny Hitler mustache secreted safe within the pocket of my skort, I listened to Archer's counsel.

  "She's some queen of someplace," Archer whispers.

  Of Renaissance France, I reply. The consort and queen of Henry II, she died in 1589. Most likely she's condemned to eternal hellfire for instigating the St. Bartholomew's Day Massacre, in which Parisian mobs slaughtered thirty thousand French Huguenots. As we draw nearer and nearer, the queen's eyes become fixed upon me, perhaps sensing my newfound power and my growing lust for more. In the same manner that Hitler was trapped in the persona of a ranting blowhard, and the Countess Bathory was fixated on being a permanent youthful beauty, Catherine de Medicis seems far too attached to her imperious noble station of birth.

  Stopping, Archer allowed me to continue my approach, my every step narrowing the distance between me and my new adversary. From behind me, standing at a safe distance, Archer called, "Go for it, Madison. Kick her royal candy ass....."

  Admittedly, my battle charge might've appeared somewhat crudely juvenile, consisting of racing full-tilt at the object of my attack, shouting a litany of playground curses such as, "Prepare to die, dirty butt-face, you stinky, skuzzy dumb-ass snotty stuck-up wop queen... !" before shoving Catherine de Medicis's bodily from her candy-bar throne and pummeling her with a rain of toe kicks, fingernail scratches, hair pulls, savage tickles, and cruel pinches. Yet despite this schoolyard barbarism, I did manage to compel the lofty de Medicis to consume a mouthful of soil after successfully positioning Her Highness to lie facedown upon the ground. Thence, it took only my modest body weight directed through the point of my crooked elbow, driven between her shoulder blades, to motivate her royal Cathyness to recite, under duress, "Si! Si! I am a skuzzy Miss Skuzzyski and a Douchey MacDouche Bag and I smell like stale cat pee......" It goes without saying that neither Catherine nor her parasitic courtiers could understand a syllable of what she recited, but her compulsory speech occurred as highly comic to Archer, who erupted in a veritable volcano of surly guffaws.

  Yes, now it's power I want. Not affection. I don't want that kind of pointless, impotent power, as earlier discussed. Mark my words: Being dead isn't all sitting around in remorseful reflection and bitter self-recrimination. Death, like life, is what you make of it.

  Fortified with the Hitler mustache and the Bathory diamond, I made quick, brutal work of this cutthroat religious bigot. Once she's sent packing to join Adolf in the mucky swamp, I resume my journey with Archer, the coronet of pearls now balanced upon my own head, and the ragged retinue of Renaissance ladies and gentlemen fall into step among my growing legion of followers. Traipsing along behind us, Archer and me, our army swells with Nazi zombies... plus these de Medicis hangers-on... later, Caligula's camp followers.

  You may attribute my new boldness to a sort of placebo effect, but by carrying the mustache of a loudmouthed despot, my own words began to sound more eloquent to my ear. My every statement carries the force and authority of a speech blasted over amplifiers to a rally of goose-stepping, torch-bearing, book-burning minions. In order to balance the pearl crown of a righteous, sadistic queen, I'm forced to stand taller, my spine, my bearing, my entire carriage stre
tched to a nobler height. Casting aside my sensible Bass Weejun loafers, I place my feet in the high heels provided by Babette, further increasing my stature.

  Before we reached the next horizon, I'd vanquished yet another foe—Vlad III, alias Vlad the Impaler, a prince of the Dracul family, who died in 1476 after torturing some hundred thousand people to death—a man who formed the flesh-and-blood basis of the Dracula vampire legend. From him, I claimed a jeweled dagger, a dusty clique of corrupt knights, and a treasure chest brimming with Charleston Chews.

  Subsequent to him, I utilize said dagger to obtain the testicles of the corrupt Roman emperor Caligula. And his mighty cache of Reese's Peanut Butter Cups.

  After we'd resumed walking, at present shadowed by half the obedient idiots from world history, I ask Archer, "So you're in Hell because you shoplifted bread?" I say, "How...Jean Valjean."

  Archer merely stares at me.

  "How Number 24601..." I say, fluttering my hand in a flourishing Gallic gesture. "How Les Miserables."

  In response, Archer says, "There's more to it than just stealing bread."

  Farther along on our journey, we enter the Thicket of Amputated Limbs, a grotesque bramble of severed arms and legs, tangled hands and feet, which filters the smoky, sooty breeze. The path is paved with a litter of disembodied fingers, all of the limbs and digits lost and separated from their rightful owners, all the battlefield amputations and hospital leftovers which were perfunctorily discarded and never arrived at an appropriate grave site. Plus the ubiquitous, worthless popcorn balls. There, I lay claim to the belt of King Ethelred II, the English monarch responsible for the deaths of twenty-five thousand Danes in the St. Brice's Day massacre. It's from this belt that I hang the dangling, severed testicles; the jeweled dagger; and the tiny scalp of the mustache. The spoils of my ongoing campaign to prove myself a badass. Soon these talismans are joined by the ceremonial rumal, or handkerchief, used by cult leader Thug Behram to strangle his 931 victims. This belt, becoming the grisly charm bracelet that proclaims my progress from nicety-nice boarding-school girl to way-impolite warrior princess with no regard for decorum. I am the Anti-Jane Eyre. Barely breaking my stride, I vanquish the infamous Bluebeard, Gilles de Rais, adding his braquemard—the rod with which he'd suffocated six hundred children while sodomizing them—to the grotesque trophies which dangle and sway from my waist. As with each victory, a new troop of lieutenants falls into step in my shadow.

  Throughout my pilgrimage of transformation, the manila envelope containing the results of my salvation polygraph test, folded carefully, remains tucked deep into one hip pocket of my skort. Seldom do we break stride in our relentless campaign across the burning landscape, beneath the sky scorched with orange flames.

  "After I got the bread and diapers," Archer says, "I took them home to my old lady......"

  I say, "Please tell me that you're not a school shooter, like you originally claimed."

  And Archer says, "Just listen, okay?"

  He delivered the bread and diapers to his mother, only to discover that he'd nervously stolen the exact wrong type of diaper. Instead of swiping the brand with adhesive plastic tabs to hold them in place, Archer had brought home a less expensive product which required safety pins. To compensate, he'd offered the pins he normally wore pierced through his cheeks and nipples. It was one of these poorly sanitized punk accessories which, no doubt, pricked his infant sister. The frail child fell ill from a blood infection and, almost overnight—died.

  Sensing the awkwardness of his admission, I deliberately did not seek to make eye contact. Instead, I continued to march at Archer's side, our army streaming along in our wake. Directing my eyes straight ahead, I felt the bump and jostle of talismans, fetishes, power objects swaying from my waist and colliding with my striding hips. I stood upright, balancing the weight of my new pearly crown. Keeping the tone of my voice nonchalant, offhand, I asked if that was his reason for being eternally damned... because he'd killed his baby sister.

  "That was pretty shitty, the way she died," Archer says, keeping pace at my side. He says, "But there's more to it......"

  It's with our next step that the towers, the turrets and battlements of the Hell headquarters first poke above the far horizon. At our heels, the numbers of our marching army, the most vile scofflaws and thugs and criminals of all human history, the number of our legions has grown to become almost infinite. The combined tread of our marching feet shakes the ground, crushing discarded toffees to dust. We parade, a grand pageant, underlings prancing ahead to sprinkle our path with a fragrant carpet of Red Hots, Skittles, peanut M&M's, and gumballs. Our spoils of Boston Baked Beans and Jolly Ranchers are nearly beyond measure.

  The young lady who expired in the glow of a hotel television... she is not the same young woman who now presents herself before the gates of Hell. Hannibal should've presented such a fearsome sight. The hordes of Genghis Khan would appear as nothing compared to my own. The Spartans. The legions of the Caesars. The armies of the pharaohs. None could hope to survive a battle with these, my hollow-eyed blackguards, their corroded cutlasses and scimitars clashing against the dirty sky.

  Behold, my name is Madison Spencer, child of Antonio and Camille Spencer, citizen of Hell, and my army is as numberless as the stars. As is the wealth of my candy. I bid all the demons and devils of Hades immediately to open their stout fortress unto me.

  XXX.

  Are you there, Satan? It's me, Madison. Whether you are or you are not, it hardly matters... because I am here. The prodigal daughter. Little Maddy Spencer has come home to roost.

  Even as we approach the precipice walls of underworld headquarters, the stout gates of Hell—oaken beams blackened with age and bound in iron—are already swinging shut to block our entry. Stretched to the horizon on either hand, these crumbling battlements rise lofty as thunderheads, rearing back as if braced against our assault. Standing black against the orange sky. Here, the Great Plains of Discarded Razor Blades, a vast, baked continent paved miles deep with every dull and rusted razor blade cast off by humanity, this glittering field ends at the base of these ominous stone walls.

  A sole demon stands guard as the gates are made fast, rattling from within with the telltale rasp of bars sliding into place, chains being wrapped and locked, bolts shot. This demon, its skin pebbled with infected sores, its hide running with pus and corruption, the snout of a monstrous boar dominates its rubbery face. Its eyes are those black stones through which a killer shark surveys its cold, watery victim. Here presents itself Baal, deposed deity of the Babylonians, receiver of generations of sacrificial children slaughtered in tribute. Thundering with the voice of these screaming millions, the demon demands, "Halt and approach no closer!" The demon, Baal, commands, "Disperse your menacing armies! And relinquish your delicious stores of Nestle Crunch bars!"

  Thus blocking the path, this demon hybrid of pig and shark and pedophile demands to know my name.

  As if, at this newest moment, I knew what to call myself.

  Who I am is no longer the plump girl who'd smile winningly, bat her eyelashes, and say, "Pretty please, with sugar on top." My voice speaks with the rage of the Hitler mustache. My head stands unbowed beneath the weight of the garish de Medicis crown. My chunky loins, girded with the belt of murderous kings, swagger and display the spoils of my campaign. My hips bristle with totems and talismans, proof that I am not simply a character in a fixed book or film. I am no single narrative. As neither Rebecca de Winter nor Jane Eyre, I am free to revise my story, to reinvent myself, my world, at any given moment. Advancing beside Archer, I am resplendent in my savage finery of seized power. In my service charge the collected blackguards of a dozen tyrants now dispatched to a lesser oblivion. My fingers, stained crimson with the blood of despots, are not the fingers which paged through the paper lives of helpless romantic heroines. No more am I a passive damsel who waits for circumstance to decide her fate; now have I become the scalawag, the swashbuckler, the Heathcliff of my dreams bent o
n rescuing myself. For now do I embody all the traits I had so hoped to find in Goran. Meaning: No longer am I limited.

  I am my own rakish seducer. I do serve as my own surly, brutish bounder.

  As we advance upon the gates of Hell, not slowing our pace, that cadence of our billion-upon-billion marching feet, Archer whispers to me, "The greatest weapon any warrior can carry into battle is absolute certainty of her eternal soul."

  No slippery, wet heart beats within the damp hollow of my chest. Blood courses not beneath the delicate skin of my limbs. At this point, I am no longer anything which can be killed.

  Archer whispers, "Your death offers you a golden opportunity."

  The demon pig Baal bares its fangs, its palate brimming with the ruptured fluids and gore of countless foes, a jagged nightmare of toothy torture and suffering—but only to those still wedded to their past lives. As kings or beauties. As rich men or celebrated artists. No, such gnashing, clashing fangs would frighten only those who have yet to accept the fact of their immortality. The demon beast snorts flame, hacking the scalding air with great, slashing claws. The monster roars laughter so greedy, so guttural with hunger that even the scoundrels and knaves marching in my wake, my rapscallions and lowlifes, even they begin to fall back in fear. Even Archer, his head bent against the onslaught of venomous, sulfurous exhalations, even my blue-haired lieutenant slacks in his brave charge.

  Yet I do not venture here to be well liked. Nor do I seek any tribute of sweet, smiling affection. My objective is not to flirt and curry favor; and in my mind's eye, my hair streaming, my knees thrown high, dagger unsheathed, I appear quite Byronic.

  Upon arrival within arm's length of the heinous demon, if truth be told, I am not surprised to find myself standing alone. The entire lot of them, my legions of cads and gladiators, despite their machetes and bravado, do tremble and withdraw. Even my second in command, the punk Archer, falters in his bold attack. The whisper of his sage advice no longer hissing in my ear.