PREVIOUSLY: Channah, a Queen of Hell, for reasons of her own, has married two human transgender girls. The girls, raised by Channah’s servants as her grateful wards, had just been put through the arduous indignities—hazing and trials—required for a human to be properly bound in left-handed marriage to a demon. Seclusion is the last requirement of the ritual; but to reach their destination quickly, they will have to travel through the honeycomb, which is only accessible in Hell. She has just prepared the girls for their journey through her country. NOW:
And as they moved forward, it was true: To Penny, the light rapidly became stronger, much too rapidly for the normal physics of Earth or, as she would learn, of Hell. They were a result, instead, of the unique physics of the place where the two dimensions met and interacted with one another. And it was not just the light: there was heat, there was humidity, there was noise, there were gusts of wind, and there was smell.
Three steps forward from their place near the door, the red figures seemed clearer and more detailed than they could possibly have become in such a short distance. There was a rustling whisper, like foliage in a low wind. The heat rose as if they were in an active kitchen, and almost, Penny imagined she was smelling something sweet baking on the hearth.
Beside them, getting her first glimpse of hell, Chas suddenly gasped: “Bless me, Lord!”
Channah sniggered. “Try to stow that sort of talk while you’re here. Remember, there’s a great deal of rage.”
Six steps from the door, and the no-longer-obscure red figures began to react, turning and bustling as sufficient light fell on the Queen and her sisterwives to make them discernable from the other side. The shapes went from blurs to hazy to looking underwater, the heat became that of an afternoon in late summer, rustles became whispers and then murmurs, and the smell…
“It smells wonderful here,” Penny marveled, and then figured it out, looking at Channah. “It’s you, isn’t it? You said—in hell—you smell… dreamy and… and appetizing.”
She smiled with pleasure and nodded. “Yes, Penny. Stay close.”
“Like I needed another reason to do so,” Penny moaned, then suddenly stiffened and blushed as she realized what she had said. Channah squeezed her arm.
The Sense of Being in Hell
And then, without quite realizing the transition had ended, they were in hell.
The air was like the steam in a Venetian bathhouse—Penny had never seen one in England, but she supposed they could have them here. Penny had never been in a desert before, but her mind insisted the air in a desert should be dry, like a kitchen fireplace, not a bathhouse. She was going to sweat under her brand-new dress; but she told herself what mattered was how she looked, not how she felt. Or smelled.
And around Channah, it smelled, well, heavenly, she thought, her mind rebelling at the conflicting and confusing thoughts and sensory impressions here. She could drown in Channah’s smell, her flesh, and be happier than she had ever been in her life.
The air was cloying, heavy, without any cooling breeze; but still she felt something she eventually realized were tiny grains of sand, whipped against her by a wind she could not feel or did not exist.
Everything was wrong here. Everything was unnatural and contradictory.
Most of the landscape consisted of hot red sand, relatively flat and thin here, but with dunes visible in the distance. More imposing were the black volcanic rock structures that erupted from the sand sea, the bulk of them conic, but bristling on the surface of the cones—and even, in places, erupting from the sand—black rock in twisting, reaching shapes like beasts that had become trapped in tar, captured in their last and most desperate moments.
The sky was faintly red, matching the sand, at the horizon; but became solid, perfect black not too far above it, and remained so all the way across the sky to nearly the opposite horizon, interrupted only by a few stray swirls of what looked to be the red sand hanging listlessly in the air like smoke that had reached its maximum height.
Most jarring of all, there were jets of flame scattered across the sand and rocks, like the fire of a forge flaring when the bellows were vigorously applied to it. Seeps, she realized. Naptha, or even tar, seeping out of the ground and shooting straight and constant or, in some cases, flickering, swirled by the insensible wind.
The only constructions visible anywhere, from horizon to horizon, were walls, some intact, some crumbling, clustered close around the satanikoklus on this side of the border, made of blocks of the black volcanic stone; and a single flat road, just wide enough for two carriages to pass, extending in a perfectly, geometrically-straight line to the horizon.
But incredibly the environment of Hell—the reality of being in a whole ‘nother world—was pushed into the backs of their minds by the very real and urgent threat posed by the hoard of demons and devils swarming towards them, seemingly concentrating here as quickly as they could from every corner of the vast firelit desert around them. Whether they were running toward them, or warily loitering a couple of steps away waiting for courage, they were waving their arms in ways that felt and looked more crazy than purposeful. And although their mouths moved and shaped, and different sounds came out—not simple animal cries, but modulated voices that could have been speech—it was not speech. It was gobbledygook, more alarming in its own way than coherent, reasoned threats would have been.
They were not men—or, a few of them, women—but they were so close to being so it was hard to imagine they didn’t have the capacity for speech. The fact they were jabbering anyway, maybe aware they weren’t speaking, maybe not, was profoundly unsettling.
As Domina and her two sisterwives finished the transition to hell, the noise broke over them like a wave: screaming, shouting, incoherent jabbering from a thousand inhuman throats, and the drumming of two thousand feet on the stone square that extended from the ruined satanikoklus they stood in, to the low roofless walls of a few low stone structures, a kind of town, around it.
Penny instinctively reared backward when hit with the noise, prevented from falling backwards into Earth only by Channah’s arm suddenly tightening to hold her. The larger woman stood and held them there, making them feel safe, until they realized the wild demons and devils were not entering the satanikoklus or its cursed grounds.
When she felt them relax, she loosened her grip again on their arms, shouting over the pandemonium: “This is a desecrated place. Only the Unforgiven, and those they allow to accompany them, may come here.”
“The ‘Unforgiven,’ Domina?” Penny yelled.
“Later, Aristotle,” she snickered, gesturing at the madness all around them, which was plenty reason enough.
Literature Section “06-57 Hella Honeymoon XIII”—Part 57 of Chapter Six, “Le Saccage de la Sale Bête Rouge” (“Rampage of the Dirty Red Beast”)—1092 words—Accompanying Images: 1576-1579—Published 2025-04-09—©2025 The Remainderman. This is a work of fiction, not a book of suggestions. It’s filled with fantasies, idiots, and criminals. Don’t believe them or imitate them.