Celebrating 100 Watchers milestone (again) on DeviantArt
06-64 100 Watchers! (Take Two)—Accompanying Images: 1611-1614—Published 2025-04-16—©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.
PREVIOUSLY: Channah, a Queen of Hell, for reasons of her own, has married two human transgender girls she is taking through the Hell of Lust on a flying chariot ride to reach their honeymoon destination. Landing at the foreboding Chang’an Castle, Penny stumbles and is caught by the mysterious and powerful Duchess Fang. NOW:
The tall, powerful, high-ranking woman didn’t move her arm an inch, or tell Penny to rise, and somehow Penny knew she wanted her to stay in her awkward and clearly-dependent half-curtsying position to emphasize her weakness. With her other hand, the woman ran her fingers through Penny’s reddish-brown hair, frowning. “Red. You must be the one called ‘Pen-ants.’”
“Yes, Mistress,” she began, not about to correct her, and amazed anyone would have considered her important enough to mention. “I’m honored—”
“Yes, you are.” And then, with a glint of a genuine if predatory smile, she let go of Penny’s arm, asking in surprise: “Nothing’s been explained to you, has it?”
Penny stumbled back and recovered her balance, opening her mouth but relieved enough when Channah strode up, saving her the need to speak by interjecting.
“Of course not! She’s practically a child! Get over here, Chas!” she called, as she and the woman embraced one another with a confusing, stressful combination of intimacy, warmth, and tension. “And I don’t mind you having a bit of fun and another avenue for… working things out.”
Penny, of course, had no idea what they were talking about, but thought it a near-certainty it portended nothing good, trying her best to remain submissive and pleasant, instead of bursting out with the hundred questions she had—about what they were saying, about this remarkable succubus, and about anything and everything she had experienced since walking through the portal. The reptilian smile shared by the two succubae didn’t give her any greater comfort.
“Your Majesty,” the woman, in her turn, bowed shallowly but quite formally. “You honor me.” Whether she meant with her visit, or… whatever had just passed between them, Penny was uncertain.
“My dear Fang, may I present my two new Princess-Courtesans, Chastity and Penance Batonnoir.”
Both girls curtsied again, formally and deeply, bowing their heads. “Mistress,” they chorused.
“I look forward to… having you both,” the woman said, her imperfectly-concealed expression of distaste casting doubt upon her polite words. Words chosen as carefully as she always spoke, making it seem her ambiguous wording was deliberate, as Channah laughed:
“I’m sure. Girls, this is Duchess Fang of Chang’an, my oldest and most-powerful vassal in China. What you call Cathay.”
“China?” Penny asked, as she was wont to do.
Channah smirked, stroking Penny’s hair possessively. “Penny’s just full of questions. I’m sure you’ll enjoy helping her learn how—and when—to ask them properly.” Then she stage-whispered in Penny’s ear: “You’d better behave around this one. She’s known as a very effective trainer.”
“I’m sure I will,” Countess Fang agreed, looking at Penny as if she were sizing the poor girl up to see how many wolves she could feed.
“What outsiders call ‘China’ considers itself, with some justification, the center of the human world, with a vast population and more-developed technology and culture than many other human domains. ‘Cathay’ is a term for the open steppe country North of China, origin of the Mongols who not too long ago nearly conquered all of Asia and Europe. You see, Penny, when you ask me a question, I will answer it. And then, I will make you do something for me. Remember this favor when you return. I certainly will.”
“Yes, Mistress,” Penny swallowed and shrank back against Channah without intending to, stifling her urge to ask what Chinese people called China.
“I’m appointing Fang as one of your Dominae,” Channah advised them. “Whenever you visit here without me, she will be in charge of you, and of course you are to obey her as you would obey me.”
“Yes, Domina,” the girls agreed nervously. “A pleasure to meet you, Domina,” they curtsied again to Fang.
Penny took extra, nervous care to curtsy as low as she could and to hold her pose as long as she could without disrupting the pace of events. And something in Fang’s eyes took notice, not displeased with her courtesy…. or perhaps her fear. “Duchess Fang has consented to help with your training in the arts of pillowing and love.”
The girls gasped, both reflexively making eye contact with their new trainer, who seemed more curious about, than pleased or displeased by, their surprise and embarrassment, or by Channah’s announcement.
“And while I know you’re going to love the next week with me, I thought it would be a perfect start to our honeymoon for her to help you get in the right mindset for it by helping you remember and focus on what’s most important about it.”
“Which is?” the Duchess prompted them.
“Pleasing Domina?” Penny whispered.
Fang put her hand under Penny’s chin, forcing it up with her fingers and running her thumb aggressively around Penny’s lips. Despite herself, shocked little Penny might instinctively have tried to pull away if she hadn’t already been backed against Channah with nowhere to go. Continuing to regard Penny predatorily, even as she put her other hand on top of Chas’s head possessively, she commented: “There might be some hope for you yet, big-open-inviting-mouth princess.”
Penny snapped her lips closed, only to find herself sucking on Fang’s thumb. Rather than withdrawing it, Fang quite deliberately pushed it further in. “A thumbsucker. I’ve seen babies and toddlers do that in China, but never adults. Are you an infant?”
“More of a natural-born toe-sucker once you get to know her,” Channah smirked, then clapped approvingly: “Look at the poor darling’s face! She feels violated and embarrassed.”
“But too polite and intimidated to spit me out,” Fang observed, working her thumb back and forth in Penny’s mouth while the two succubae laughed. Looking at Chas, she said, simply, “Open!” and pushed her other thumb into Chas’s mouth. “Close!” and Chas snapped her lips shut around her other thumb. She was now held in the same awkward fashion as Penny, and subjected to the same suggestive motions. “Your two pink dolphins are easy to catch. I don’t think they have much future in the wild.”
“Hothouse flowers,” Channah admitted, putting her arms around both girls while Fang, licking her lips, stepped closer, so her legs were pressing into their crotches and their heads were forced slightly back against Channah’s shoulders, and Fang, with a mildly curious expression, pushed her thumbs as far as she could into the girls’ mouths, liking it when their eyes watered and they struggled not to choke at the tickling of her long nails on the backs of their throats.
Literature Section “06-64 Hella Honeymoon XX”—Part 64 of Chapter Six, “Le Saccage de la Sale Bête Rouge” (“Rampage of the Dirty Red Beast”)—1081 words—Accompanying Images: 1599-1601—Published 2025-04-16—©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.
PREVIOUSLY: Channah, a Queen of Hell, for reasons of her own, has married two human transgender girls she is taking through the Hell of Lust on a flying chariot ride to reach their honeymoon destination. Now comes the hard part—landing. NOW:
Their minds realized, through the screaming senses of their bodies, that this chariot was going to touch back down on the ground, whether under Channah’s control, or that of merciless gravity. The faint hope and desperate prayer of survival suddenly reminded the girls they needed to prepare for that absolutely certain impact. They frantically stuffed their corks back in their bottles, set them in their slots at the front of the chariot, then braced themselves as tightly and desperately as they could, arms deep through the leather straps bolted to the chariot, bodies pressed tight against the outer edges and back of it, their free arms crossing one another’s at the wrists to clench onto the back edge of the chariot with knuckles whiter than their dresses.
From their vantage point, the horse and chariot seemed to be coming in too low over a final, monumental two-story arch separating the road from the open ground, as if the horse’s hooves would hit the top of it and he would tumble through the air, crippled, throwing their chariot forward over him. Gaining a final impression of a formation of guards waiting to their left on the sand, the girls’ faces tightened into closed-eyed, rictus-grinned masks of clenched muscle. And at least one of them might have screamed, only the speed with which events were progressing preventing their bodies from attempting something instinctive and crazy like jumping over the sides of the chariot before it hit, knowing:
There was absolutely nothing they could do except pray—
And with a breathless panic their bodies felt weightlessness for a second as Fury stopped and dropped, their momentum exactly matching Fury’s deceleration and therefore shrieking up their nerves that they were in free-fall just like their bodies had feared all along. We told you so, assholes! Before the bone-jarring reconnection with the ground at once caused an instant terror this was it, followed by the realization they were still alive and on the ground. Then just as they started to hope, they were panicked by a final jolt—the wheels running off the end of the road into the sand, they opened their eyes in alarm to see the black stone wall on the opposite side of the triangle rushing at them with too much speed.
They gasped and breathed in relief as Fury decelerated, squeezing one another’s hands again, almost in disbelief that Fury and Channah had had everything well in hand after all, and nothing bad was going to happen to them for defying the gods by attempting flight.
“Oh my. Oh my.” The girls squealed and hugged tightly and happily, before a cold, unfriendly woman’s voice with a heavy accent they didn’t recognize, interrupted them, speaking Arabic:
“Come out of the chariot now. Fury is ready to be done with it.”
They turned, seeing soldiers on both sides already releasing Fury’s harness and simultaneously detaching the twin tongues of the chariot from the harness, careless of the fact that as a two-wheeled vehicle, the chariot would pitch forward and unceremoniously eject them the second it was loose. Penny didn’t begrudge the horse at all, he had just performed a miracle for the girls’ benefit. But it was oddly deflating and disappointing for yet another denizen of hell to confirm that here, Channah’s horse was of significantly more importance and regard than the two girls. And after surviving such a flight! Penny thought unreasonably. As if mundane death or injury was less likely after a miraculous and unexpected survival.
All thoughts of honoring their Queen with their ladylike dignity were pushed aside by the imperative to get out of the chariot. Penny was about to jump off the side of it, telling herself it couldn’t possibly be scary after what they’d just been through, only to notice another soldier already folded up in footstool position below her.
With a slight lack of decorum induced by haste, Penny half-scrambled, half-fell out of her side of the Chariot while Chas did the same on the other side, wincing and flinching “Sorry!” as her shoes landed on the soldier’s back with more force than she would have intended, and too much momentum to completely avoid her heels digging a bit into the poor man before she staggered down to the sand, barely stumbling to a halt as someone caught her arm, stopping her inches before bumping into them.
Raising her eyes up the detailed red leather boots and tooled red leather armor, Penny immediately registered from her shape this was a woman, and from her clothing she was wealthy and well-appointed. As her eyes continued up, she knew the woman would have been a head taller than her even if they were both barefoot. And finally, looking up into her face, she gasped in surprise to find a woman with lovely, glowing pale amber skin, exquisitely curved horns carved in bas relief, and eyes that for a split-second she registered with fright as demonic, perhaps because of what Penny sensed behind them. Those eyes looked back at Penny like a cat’s, trying to decide whether it wanted to waste its time toying with an ant, or simply ignore it. Penny shrank back involuntarily, sensing the woman’s satisfaction, before something about the woman’s face, or perhaps the patterns tooled into her leather armor, jarred an even stronger impression:
“Are you from Cathay?!” Immediately aghast, even as the woman’s brows knit further in displeasure, Penny stumbled on, curtsying as best she could, feeling particularly pathetic in the awkward semi-curtsy she was forced to make with one arm still held rigidly by the woman’s strong hand: “I’m sorry, Mistress, I’ve never met anyone from Cathay before.” Penny was a stranger in hell, but even without the benefit of having read Dante’s Inferno, she would have had no doubt at all the woman outranked her. Everything about her, from her clothing to her appearance to her attitude to her speech to her position here greeting her Queen, screamed she was of high rank. And eventually Penny got around to saying the right thing: “You’re so beautiful and exotic, Mistress. More than I could have imagined from woodcuts.”
“Human ignorance never ceases to amaze me,” she concluded, her eyes softening just a little bit at the compliment.
Literature Section “06-63 Hella Honeymoon XIX”—Part 63 of Chapter Six, “Le Saccage de la Sale Bête Rouge” (“Rampage of the Dirty Red Beast”)—1048 words—Accompanying Images: 1596-1598—Published 2025-04-15—©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.
PREVIOUSLY: Channah, a Queen of Hell, for reasons of her own, has married two human transgender girls she is taking through the Hell of Lust to reach their honeymoon destination. But before they get there, she’s taking them on a memorable hellride. NOW:
As their destination grew closer and more real, sensation—and then immediately panic—rose back in them from oblivion to preeminence. Their eyes could see, and their bodies feel, that the movement each sensed corresponded to one another again. And those senses immediately started clamoring that they were hundreds of feet above the ground, with nothing under them to hold them up, and indeed that they were descending toward it. Hurtling toward it! Their bodies remembered what they may never have consciously realized in the limited world of short distances they had spent their lives living in: That when unsupported things fall, they accelerate, with potentially-gruesome consequences. Their senses started screaming at them to do something, anything, to stop their fall. When their minds knew full well, they could do nothing. Nothing but hold onto one another and trust in their bold Domina’s confidence.
Below them, the city—for that was what it was, many times larger than the village of walls around the satanikoklus—unfolded, with large straight whitish stone main avenues and narrower red trails snaking between them around a confusing welter of incomplete wall fragments at angles to one another. There would be three walls with a fourth missing; wide gaps instead of narrow doors in curtain walls; softer dark-gray pumice blocks piled on top of more solid white granite; and a complete absence of floors to insulate any of the occupants from the searing heat of the naked sand.
The humidity rose, reminding them how fortunate they had been without it, and they began to feel the strikes of tiny grains of driven sand again, making their bodies long for the remembered peace of the upper atmosphere.
Their destination within the city seemed plain enough: A single huge building, a castle, solid black—a rock-solid black granite, not the cheap gray pumice used elsewhere to fill out and replace stronger stones—right where the three roads met, with a wide strip of cleared space—a killing ground—separating its outer walls from the densely-packed jigsaw jumble of lesser structures surrounding it. The only structure in each of the three killing fields was a single solid hexagonal structure in the very center of it. The castle’s position, in contrast to the satanikoklus, was to no degree arbitrary. It was exactly where the three roads met—their focal point, in fact.
The castle’s basic design was triangular, with the arriving roads connecting to the three angles where the walls met. The outer walls—and even more, the monumental gateways at each corner—were massive, beyond massive, and several stories tall. Within them were smaller walls, structural rather than defensive, and something they had not seen since coming to hell: solid four-walled structures with proper terrace roofs and doors closing doorways. At each corner, an actual metal gate served to exclude outsiders from the castle itself. And immediately behind each gate a series of triangular bunkers provided a warren of passageways barely wide enough for a chariot to pass, between the bunkers and under arches riddled with murder holes.
Cannon and soldiers dotted the tops of the walls, illuminated, like the castle itself, by an intense cluster of the flares scattered at much lower density throughout the landscape. This confirmed some shred of reason in the madness of this place, that the otherwise-unremarkable site had been specifically chosen for the castle, and thus the city, for an actual reason: because of the concentration of naphtha seeps coming from the land here.
Inside the castle there were soldiers and servants, human in appearance like the one who had served them back at the satanikoklus. Outside, prevented from entering by either by magic or the heavy gates, was a seething ocean of the crimson, almost tomato-colored red demons and devils.
“Why do you think they’re that color?” Chas said, having to speak loudly over the wind flowing past them, but nothing like the clamor of the creatures at ground level.
Penny frowned in thought, then made a face. “No. Oh dear. It’s like… maybe it is, scar tissue? Or—”
“Or even, open wounds,” Chas suggested with a similarly appalled face, imagining she was finishing Penny’s sentence.
But Penny clarified: “Or the most intimate flesh.”
“What do you mean?”
“Well—the lips. The inside of the mouth. The nipples and—”
“The rawest parts,” Chas finished.
“The most vulnerable,” Penny agreed.
“It’s like they’ve been skinned…” Chas swallowed.
“But no. They can’t be,” Penny shook her head, perhaps trying to persuade both of them with the power of insistence. “Devils are just red.”
But even that gory thought was not enough to keep their attention, not with as much of Channah’s hell-brewed spiked wine as they’d had, and even more, the constant barrage of fantastic and previously-unimagined sights bombarding their senses from every direction. Even the maddening sand wouldn’t discourage them from trying to take in as much as they could. Some few hundred yards from the castle, one of the red creatures had caught sight of them and its excitement, almost desire, spread like a wildfire from its origin to envelop the entire crowd in the same kind of frenzied, mad efforts to reach the chariot that had characterized their departure.
The chariot passed close over the three-story castle walls, close enough to make out faces watching them with enough wide-eyed interest to indicate flying horses and chariots were rare as eclipses even in hell.
The closer they got to the ground, the faster they seemed to be moving, vertically and horizontally, a kind of optical illusion that insisted to the senses they were accelerating (read: falling) in an uncontrolled descent, and thus to their deaths or at least grievous bodily harm. It was a jangling alarm that sounded and reverberated through every nerve and sinew of their bodies, clang-a-langing like demanding children banging spoons on pots.
The three roads seemed to traverse the castle, passing through numerous gates and under several building as they did so, meeting in the center of an open triangle of red sand interrupted only by three seeps, the whole clearing perhaps 10 or 12 times the length from Fury’s nose to the stern of the chariot. They were approaching it directly over the road to the satanikoklus, descending between three-story buildings lining either side of the road that seemed breathtakingly close at the speed they were rushing past them, with nothing solid to hold them up or in line.
Literature Section “06-62 Hella Honeymoon XVIII”—Part 62 of Chapter Six, “Le Saccage de la Sale Bête Rouge” (“Rampage of the Dirty Red Beast”)—Abridged 1079 words—Accompanying Images: 1593-1595—Published 2025-04-14—©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.
PREVIOUSLY: Channah, a Queen of Hell, for reasons of her own, has married two human transgender girls she is taking through the Hell of Lust to reach their honeymoon destination. But before they get there, she’s going to test their exhibitionistic limits. NOW:
As Fury, Channah’s steed, powered the ascent of their chariot into the sky, the screaming of the demons and devils below rose to a new and more-frantic pitch and they began jumping and then trying to climb on top of one another as if to catch hold of a chariot rim or axle, even after it would have been clear to any rational mind that doing so was impractical.
As the chariot surged and rocked, the girls screamed, braced themselves harder, and began gulping wine. Sipping proved impossible because they knew they daren’t risk spilling wine on their gorgeous white dresses, so they had to wrap their lips firmly around the bottlenecks before tipping them up.
The chariot was almost immediately the height of three men above the ground, then six, then nine, then quickly a height greater than either of the girls had ever experienced or even imagined. With a wide-eyed slack-jawed glance at one another they raised their bottles for another drink. Penny was hardly able to open her eyes, and yet at the same time unable to resist the queasy thrill of taking in the dramatic scene unfolding beneath her. As they rose in the air it seemed to grow slightly less rotten with brimstone and the sand, mercifully, seemed to have been left behind closer to its home in the shifting dunes.
Everything grew smaller and quieter below them, and soon they were able to see a greater distance, down and from horizon to horizon, than their eyes had ever encompassed before. The sheer dimensions of it were overwhelming enough by themselves. Channah’s realm was revealed as a burning red desert of such scale the mind wanted to reclassify the fantastical and utterly-unique volcanic rock formations that punctured the sanguine powdered sea as commonplace and fungible; a set so numerous, surely not one of them could be truly matchless.
The black rocks now looked like holes through the floor of hell into a bottomless black pit below, distinguished only, if at all, by their outlines. At the same time, almost every feature within the glowing burnt-orange sand flattened and blurred until it looked like an endless and monotonous moth-eaten rug thrown over the abyss. The tiny red figures shrank and merged until they were only visible where they clustered around the satanikoklus, and then the figures themselves were lost behind the waning light of their torches. Then the stone walls and the activity within them became a mere abstract pattern of whites and crimsons interrupting the bloody endless orange, with the ruler-straight stone road like a latitude line under them, pointing the way for Channah and Fury. As they got enough distance, the girls realized the main road did not end or even bisect the satanikoklus. Instead, it passed some distance, perhaps leagues, from the satanikoklus, to and from destinations unknown in either direction, with a shorter road of slightly-brighter (new?) stone connecting the square in the settlement to the main road.
There came a point when the ground seemed so far away, so remote and unreal, that the fear of falling subsided. It wasn’t imminent or even tangible enough to register as a real thing, and so it became a mere idea. Even though they could feel the rapid motion of the chariot, it didn’t correspond to any infinitesimal change in their position above the landscape, and this detached their senses from the earthbound world below, bringing them into another: the serenity of space.
They kept expecting to reach the stars and perhaps the moon. Surely they would get close enough to them to really comprehend them and study them in detail, up close. But no matter how high they rose in the hellish sky, there was nothing to see. Not one thing, not a star, not a reflection, not a half-sensed motion detected from the corner of an eye, to break or even vary the endless inky blackness, leaving it without form or dimension. The mind—or was it the body?—even yearned for the maddening sand to hit it again and help make things more real. The moment the ground ceased to be relevant and real, acrophobia was replaced by a weird stomach-churning juxtaposition of claustrophobia and agoraphobia, their physical forms unable to tell if they were alone and separate from everything in a petrifying unreachable nothingness, or drowning in a terrifying, unrelenting, crushing ocean of darkness.
They had no reference-point, no reality, except the hollow chariot they sat in, one another—who they could bond with in mutual fear—and the self-assured woman riding her horse in front of them, leading them without any apparent hesitance or doubt to the safety and certainty of her chosen destination. Between draughts of wine, they held hands for comfort, daring to allow a few inches of space between their bodies and the firm chariot walls so they could feel the comfort of one another’s hips, sides, shoulders, and warmth. And their eyes locked on the woman—their woman, their Domina—they knew and understood and, well, trusted with their very lives, wishing she were sitting here between them with her arms around them, laughing at the pliant and accommodating world she seemed to live fearlessly in.
They were so disconnected from the landscape below that at first they didn’t even notice their Queen was leading them back down into hell. Chas squeezed Penny’s hand firmly, bringing her attention back to her own physical senses, and startling them into realizing they had actual, useful information for her again. Penny swallowed and looked backwards, daring to move despite her body’s demand for the security of perceived stability, and could not recognize anything behind them except the white line of the road disappearing into sand, long before it reached the horizon.
As the desert shrank before them, and its features expanded and swam back into focus, they immediately distinguished a pattern of stone and fire and eventually movement up ahead of them, at the point where the direct line of the straight road from the distant satanikoklus ended, before splitting like a “Y” and proceeding at different angles to the horizons ahead of them.
Literature Section “06-61 Hella Honeymoon XVII”—Part 61 of Chapter Six, “Le Saccage de la Sale Bête Rouge” (“Rampage of the Dirty Red Beast”)—1026 words—Accompanying Images: 1589, 1591-1592—Published 2025-04-13—©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.
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. Now the Queen has commanded them to help her entertain the hordes of hell. NOW:
When Channah had finished her love-strut along the catwalk and reached the satanikoklus, she turned around and watched the girls’ progress. Separated from the immediacy of her enthusiastic presence, they felt more awkward and restrained and vulnerable, especially Penny, but they did their best to imitate her. And if it wasn’t accomplished with quite her panache, it was graceful enough for men, as they built up their confidence, trying to block out the fighting erupting all around them.
When they reached her, she immediately spun them back around to face the crowd and led them in a deep actor’s bow, kissing each girl fiercely on the cheek and exulting: “There’s a bottle of wine for each of you in the chariot. I can hardly wait to see you two go all the way at the capitol! ”
And with a playful slap on their bottoms she was gone, striding back toward her horse before either of the girls, suddenly worried and anxious again on top of their momentary adrenaline high, could ask her what she meant.
Apparently when she walked away the last time, the soldier had recovered the rein—it was unclear to Chas and Penny, whether the horse was sentient. And therefore, it was unclear whether the soldier was holding the rein for the usual reason of controlling the horse; or if his sole mission was simply to convenience the Queen by picking up the discarded rein off the ground and waiting patiently for her to return for it. In either event, he now stood at attention waiting for her, once again.
This time, when the Queen approached, he right-faced, dropped to his knees, and jackknifed forward with military precision so he formed a human footstool, while at the same time twisting his arm and straightening it so it jutted directly up at the sky behind him, holding the reins at a convenient height for the Queen’s grip. Taking them without a word, in her high-heeled boots, Channah climbed onto the back of the kneeling soldier for greater height without, apparently, giving him, or his back, any thought; and swung up onto her bare-backed horse. The soldier immediately scurried to his feet; then to the chariot just a moment before the girls, walking carefully in their high heels, reached it. There, he threw himself down into the same position.
The girls looked down at him, aghast, then at one another. Penny tried to peer over to the other side of the chariot to see if there was another entrance there. But if it was, it was just as high as the one on this side.
Chas leaned close: “We’re supposed to make her proud! Can you reach the chariot without his help, and still remain ladylike?”
They both knew the answer to that. Penny shook her head and, once Chas was in the chariot, followed her example by standing on the man’s back, both of them trying to keep their weight on their toes so their sharp heels wouldn’t dig into the man’s back. “Thank you!” Penny shouted as she climbed. “I’m sorry!”
As the girls settled into the comfortable seat, bracing themselves for the ride so they could maintain their dignity, the soldier stood, removed a pair of shockingly white and fresh cloth gloves from a pocket, pulled them on, and then reverently reached into the chariot, pulling a long straight bundle from the front and hurrying back to Channah, unwrapping the bundle and presenting its contents to Channah without ever touching them.
With pleasure, she removed a thick gold belt she fastened around her waist; then a long, coiled piece of metal with a handle the girls didn’t recognize that she snapped onto the left side of her belt; and a fearsome black scepter with a black skull mounted at the top, which she slid through the right side of her belt and snapped into place. Looking meaningfully back at them, she made a waving motion with her hand, and they both nodded understanding, straightening their shoulders and raising their hands in their best regal poses. Then she raised an eyebrow at them, pretending to search, until Chas reached forward to pull the loosely-corked bottle on her side of the chariot and Penny imitated her.
Lastly she terrified them by mouthing exaggeratedly, with a deliberately exaggerated grin and a wink: “HOLD. ON. TIGHT!” Swallowing in fear, the girls began bracing themselves as firmly as possible, Penny finding a leather arm strap on his side of the chariot and pointing out its companion on the other side of the chariot, to Chas.
Finally, Channah pulled out a wicked long, thick, well-oiled black bullwhip that she kept in one hand, using the other for the reins. The soldier was bowing deeply and then backing away quickly. “Is she going to leave him behind?!” Penny asked Chas, who shrugged. Clearly his only thought was to get away from them, not stay close. And his reason for moving became clear quickly enough: before her horse even started forward, she expertly twirled the whip in the air to gather speed, and snapped it forward, cracking it with a sound like thunder that shocked the girls—and the crowd of devils and demons—every bit as much as the lightning that sizzled briefly back and forth between the end of the handle and the tip of the whip.
When Channah cracked her whip, the guard stumbled and almost fell. The girls reeled back in their seats, all thoughts of regal decency momentarily banished. And even the ocean of red monsters spreading out across the land in front of them reeled backward, their cacophony rising in pitch, the disturbance amongst them again spreading like concentric waves of reaction from those closest to the Queen, to those further away. Every living—or, at least, moving, apparently awake—thing from one horizon to the other reacted to the whip except for Channah and Fury, although as she urged Fury forward she straightened and leaned forward, swirling the whip like a spiked dragon’s tail and cracking it again in the air. This time, the lightning was not limited by the length of the leather tail: thin tendrils of lightning extended weakly from the tip into the air itself, and the accompanying cracking sound was louder than the first.
Fury lurched forward, but not only forward: He also bounded up, rising on his hind legs and launching himself into the sky. Chas and Penny screamed in fright as it became obvious their ride would not be earthbound, but airborne. With a sudden jerk, Fury’s momentum carried the chariot into the air, slowly gathering speed as the product of whatever traction Fury’s hooves and the chariot’s drive train were able to gain on the air. Meanwhile, Channah kept cracking her whip, over and over, the resultant lightning storm gathering more force with every snap of it until a veritable electrical storm crackled and shook the sky and the closest surface of the Earth, demons beginning to duck and scatter, overwhelmed with the amount of lightning falling on them and crackling overhead. Had anyone asked the girls’ opinion, they would have agreed with the demons below who were voting with their feet: Channah and Fury were a terrifying pair. But nobody ever seemed to care what the girls thought.
Literature Section “06-60 Hella Honeymoon XVI”—Part 60 of Chapter Six, “Le Saccage de la Sale Bête Rouge” (“Rampage of the Dirty Red Beast”)—1166 words—Accompanying Images: 1586-1588—Published 2025-04-12—©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.
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. Now the girls are learning consorts of the Queen of Lust are expected to help her whip her subjects into a frenzy. NOW:
Channah gave her girls a devilish smile and extended both arms towards them, beckoning them forward with a leering grin that made it clear she expected them to imitate her flirtatious manner when they followed. She bent over at the waist, slapping her hands against her knees (and possibly-inadvertently jutting her butt backwards at the frantic crowd behind her), laughing at the girls’ panicked, terrified reaction, practically hugging one another for support. Behind her, her antics seemed to arouse some of her admirers enough that scuffles started breaking out. Here and there, demons further back determined to get closer at the expense of closer demons, who refused to make way for them and tried to push them back.
When the girls hesitated to immediately follow Channah’s lead, she shook her head and wagged her finger, chiding them, and then narrowed her eyes, communicating that her good humor had a hard, and very close, limit, coercing them into action.
Turning so red and warm-faced they feared they would start to glow like hot coals, they swallowed and tried strutting, imitating her long straight-legged stride, and quickly figuring out that they could swing their hips wider by turning their feet as soon as they touched the ground, but before they took their entire weight.
They could not make out her voice, but her lips whooped joyously and she clapped her hands again approvingly, laughing both at them and with them, managing to tease and encourage at the same time. Still bending forward with her booty thrust out behind her to the crowd, she took turns bending and straightening her legs so her hips swayed from side to side, nodding encouragingly when the girls awkwardly turned their feet more, exaggerating the sway of their hips further.
It felt completely unnatural and… and even whorish, the two girls having been raised as modest young ladies. But as they realized they were having their own effect on the crowd—not as insane as that provoked by Channah, but real and palpable—it helped them with their confidence, and little smiles of satisfaction crept across their faces despite their attempts to stifle them. Both girls noticed, and were both amazed and not-quite-disappointed, when a couple of spats erupted among demons who were fighting to get closer to them. Penny even caught Channah’s eye, pointing to the fight with a wondering look, and blushed with pleasure when Channah smiled wolfishly and nodded.
Of course, the girls’ efforts and mixed feelings about the results they obtained, just made Channah smirk more widely and knowingly, as if she were burrowing into their brains, which made both girls tingle with the vulnerable embarrassment she managed to evoke in them in all things sexual.
By the time they reached her, they practically darted into her welcoming arms, warmed and rewarded by her embraces and sweet kisses.
Turning around between them to face the crowd with them, she said: “Penny, watch and be ready to imitate!” Then she let go of Penny, turning her head and body towards Chas, took her cheeks in her hands, and kissed her boldly, making sure to pull back so hundreds of observers could clearly see Chas’s loose, slack, stunned mouth and Channah’s long snakelike tongue, before she returned to making out.
A couple of moments later it was Penny’s turn, and when Penny accepted her passively rather than more actively as Chas had done, she used her giant tongue to deep-throat Penny, long enough to press her uvula up against the back of her throat and make her gag, even when she pulled back far enough to regard Penny, that their lips were separated by two inches of air and the entire crowd could see Channah’s big red uncircumcised tongue fucking Penny’s throat, driving the crowd absolutely insane with the sense of Channah’s aggression, especially when Penny’s knees buckled and she struggled to stay upright under Channah’s sexy, aggressive assault.
Laughing joyously, Channah let go of the girls, raising her arms in triumph for a moment, before signaling the girls to turn around. Now the three of them were in a sort of huddle, with Channah in the middle, facing away from the centerline of the square; and Penny and Chas at thirty-degree angles to her, facing the middle of the huddle, with their bottoms pointed towards the two separate sides of the square behind them.
Putting her arms over their shoulders, she commanded: “Feet together—very ladylike, like this!” She indicated herself, nodding as they imitated her, then narrated her own actions: “Now bend your knees slightly so you have some control… good… and wiggle your booties! Come on, ladies, thrust them back at that crowd and let them know how hot you are!” When she was dissatisfied with their efforts she pulled her arms from their shoulders and slapped both girls as hard as she could on their bottoms while she continued to vamp, encouraging them: “Be kind girls! You can see how many more males there are here, than females! They can’t actually go anywhere! So give them something!”
And they each did what they could manage, Chas loosening up considerably more than Penny, but even Penny wiggling her hips, if more tightly and narrowly than the other two women, stirring up the crowd even further than before, the girls thrilled and overwhelmed and shocked by how rapidly the fighting was spreading, the mindless and aggressive energy searching in vain for anywhere to go.
“Now, with legs spread!” Channah opened her legs to about shoulder width and a quarter. “Put the toes of your shoes right up against my boots so they’re touching and imitate how I’m standing!” With a mixture of laughter and nervousness, they did so. “You can bend your knees with your legs spread, but that’s usually something for much later, the last stage, with a man—or woman—who’s already completely lost in you. It sends all the ‘go’ signals, and will look vulgar to anyone who isn’t under your spell yet. So for now, keep your legs straight when your legs are spread, and roll your hips side to side. Like this!” She demonstrated, and giggling, they hesitantly began to imitate her.
“That’s the way, girls!” she shouted encouragingly, grinning with them and exaggerating her hip movements further, running her hands over their shoulders and backs when they followed suit. “Chas, you have a future as a professional dancer! And Penny, maybe not pro, but a hot amateur! Way to make me proud, girls!”
Finally, she said: “Time to wrap up this little rehearsal show! Be good sports and kiss the boys all the way back up the runway. Like this!” And with that, she headed back up the runway toward the satanikoklus, strutting as before, but this time offering them pretend kisses: bending forward at the waist and pursing her lips in one direction, then throwing her shoulders back with a radiant smile and blowing kisses in another direction, preening and wiggling and thrusting her hips and breasts suggestively, whipping the crowd into a higher and higher frenzy. Fights were breaking out everywhere now, which she ignored as completely as she had her admirers’ related efforts to reach her, continuing to flounce and prance her way back off the runway.
Literature Section “06-59 Hella Honeymoon XV”—Part 59 of Chapter Six, “Le Saccage de la Sale Bête Rouge” (“Rampage of the Dirty Red Beast”)—1218 words—Accompanying Images: 1583-1585—Published 2025-04-11—©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.
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. Now the girls are getting their first taste of it. So far, it tastes like sulfur and sand. NOW:
Instead of trying to answer Penny’s question about the Unforgiven in the midst of the clamor, Channah led them to the right, where a golden chariot waited, hitched to a huge red equine beast somewhere about where the chapel would have ended and the entry hall of Fensmere would have begun.
Penny looked over her shoulder for a final glance at Earth, but the unlighted chapel was just a slightly-less-inky spot between the horizon and the near-perfect onyx blackness overhead that may have shimmered a bit, or may simply have been separated from Penny’s eyes by the little grains of sand that appeared to swirl around them but without touching them, matching the flickering torches that whipped unpredictably to one side or another despite the absence of any wind she could feel. She swallowed, catching Channah’s eye as she turned back toward the Chariot, warming slightly when Channah winked and squeezed her hand reassuringly.
A soldier in black and red armor stood beside the great red monster at attention, holding his reins. As Channah approached, he snapped his arm out in parade-ground fashion, formally offering her the reins, eyes fixed forward on the horizon.
She accepted without even glancing at him; letting go of the girls’ arms and stepping up to hug and greet her horse, whatever she was murmuring to him lost in the general din. The second she moved away from the girls, hell got worse. Both girls gagged on the sudden, thick smell of brimstone filling the air so heavily it was like a weight bearing down on their lungs, and reeled from the sudden, immediately-irritating barrage of tiny grains of sand striking their skin, and worst of all their eyes, nonstop.
After at least a minute with the horse, Channah turned, laughing at the sight of the girls choking and rubbing their eyes. Pulling the girls’ ears close to her mouth, and thus bringing her halo of sweet, fragrant peace around them again, she yelled over the din: “Curtsy and thank Fury for agreeing to pull your little cart,” by which she presumably meant the heavy gold chariot. “Then follow my lead, staying a few steps behind me.”
They were looking at one another, unsure whether they should take her instruction literally or what else she might mean or even if she was punking them, until she leaned in again and yelled: “He’s almost as old as I am—far senior to you both! And he won’t even take a saddle unless we’re riding into battle, so it’s a great honor he agreed to pull a little cart to cushion your delicate little bottoms!”
With that, she slapped both girls, hard, on their rumps, eliciting a jerk and a squeal from each, which in turn seemed to excite the nearest devils and demons, causing a stir that started with them and then radiated out like a wave of rumor.
The girls could swear the horse snickered, but red-faced, they both curtsied as politely as they could. “Thank you, Mr. Fury, for agreeing to pull our cart for us! We’re ever so grateful, sir!” This time, they were certain the horse at least snorted at them, and moved its head in something that might have been a nod. Uncertain whether they were finished or not, they each curtsied briefly again, blurting less-formal thanks, and scurried after Channah, who by now was walking around the rim of the satanikoklus, looking down on the screaming crowd with her arms spread wide and an almost-but-not-quite beatific smile on her face, as if she were doing them all a favor by giving them collectively a moment’s notice.
And perhaps she was, the girls reflected: The crowd certainly seemed to get more excited when she came close to them. When they caught up, grateful to be back within her protective field of sweet-smelling, sand-free sanity, she smiled at them mischievously and asked: “Let’s try a practice run, shall we, girls?”
“Practice? Practice what?!” they asked fretfully.
“Watch, learn, and imitate!” she replied, before striking off down a black stone runway extending from the satanikoklus, directly into the center of the square—and therefore, of the mob. It formed a narrow peninsula of Unforgiven territory free of demons—well, the lesser sorts of demons that filled the square, anyway—putting her directly in the midst of a sea of them. Although the creatures could not touch the black stone without being scalded, they could lean in and reach over it, their hands so close to Channah’s boots the girls yelped with fright that one of them might catch her.
One thing was obvious: Channah wasn’t just walking. She was sashaying, swinging her perfect hips so they showed on one side, then the other, making the most of her long formal ladies’ dress with its wildly-inappropriate waist-high slits. She was strutting so her demoness’s thigh-high high-heeled boots gleamed red in the torchlight and drew the eye with every dramatic step. And she was flirting, her smile ramping up from mere moonglow to the sun’s brilliant midday beam in this gloomy desert, waving cheerily and cheekily.
When she reached the end of the runway, she turned fetchingly 90 degrees, looking back over her shoulder at the girls and licking her lips with amused delight to catch a miserable, mortified Penny bent over at the waist, adjusting her suddenly-painful cage. She winked, like driving a nail home though Penny’s heart, and laughed, confidently enjoying the effect she was having on every single one of the thousands of admirers that surrounded her on every side.
And that effect was both massive and disruptive, like an earthquake shaking every admirer until their teeth rattled, their legs felt rubbery, and their erogenous zones clamored for attention. All the devils and demons (the overwhelming majority men, but even the women), and of course Penny and Chas themselves, were among that enormous number. Like the sea under the command of the moon, the crowd closest to her compressed even further, and began to swell upwards, the most-crazed trying to clamber onto the shoulders of the merely-desperate in front of them. To all intents and purposes, they seemed a wave, crashing uselessly into the invisible barrier around Channah as if it were a sea wall, before receding as the weight of those on top flattened those below, driving them ba
Literature Section “06-58 Hella Honeymoon XIV”—Part 58 of Chapter Six, “Le Saccage de la Sale Bête Rouge” (“Rampage of the Dirty Red Beast”)—1066 words—Accompanying Images: 1580-1582—Published 2025-04-10—©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.
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.
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.
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:
“Now you have to make it to the chapel in your high heels. Can you do that, girls?”
They looked at one another, each hoping in vain the other would respond, before Penny finally nodded, and quite unconvincingly.
“Well, you have to. I like to dress little girls up and I love the way you look for our honeymoon, but there’s also a reason we took such care, and why you are wearing my crest.”
“Your crest?” Chas asked while Penny scrutinized the medlar forms on her sleeve carefully.
“Come come,” she insisted, leading them out through the Privy Chamber and through the Great Chamber. “Yes. The Medlar. Or… if you look closer…”
“A broken heart,” Penny knew the answer already. “That worries me, Domina.”
“Why?”
“Are you—are you a heartbreaker?”
She tried not to smile, or at least not quite so wickedly as it manifested on her face. “What if I am?”
“Please don’t break my heart, Domina,” Penny begged her sincerely.
“Oh! Sweetie!” She paused, held Penny’s cheeks, and pecked her on the lips before continuing along. “Some might have expected I already would have, by cuckolding you,” she flirted, squeezing Penny’s armored little package and eliciting a surprised squeak. She laughed. “But maybe you enjoy that a little, sweet Penny?”
“No, Domina,” she gasped, shocked but feeling her face heat with embarrassment for some reason. Channah saw it, and rumbled a laugh deep down in her throat. “Penny’s a pervert,” she teased in a singsong voice as Penny protested uselessly, looking even more embarrassed.
She was laughing with delight as they approached the door to the family’s private stairway, which momentarily brought them in view of the public room at the top of the Grand Staircase. Three maids had interrupted whatever they were doing when they heard the ladies coming; and as they came into sight, the maids gasped and curtsied, looking awestruck.
“Tell me that wasn’t gratifying,” Channah dared them, as she unlocked the stairway door and ushered them through it. Their pace was still slow, and they were still holding onto, or at least touching for reassurance, each solid surface as they passed it. But if they weren’t quite looking graceful yet, she wasn’t afraid they were going to pitch over down to the ground at any moment. It had been pretty touch-and-go, especially when they first started moving through the Privy Chamber.
“It was gratifying, Domina,” Chas murmured, and she laughed with pleasure at the admission, pulling the stairway door closed behind them and locking it.
“Wait for me girls, I want to be in front of you on the stairway in case you stumble or trip on the staircase.”
“That’s exactly what Rivqah said when she brought me to—to—”
“To be cuckolded?” She blew a mocking kiss and winked. “You were in heels for that?”
“No, Domina, I was blindfolded.”
“Mm,” she made it sound salacious with her inflection, before leading them down the staircase. “The special reason you need to look your very best, is because you’re about to meet my subjects. Or, more to the point: they’re about to meet you. You have quite a reputation to overcome,” she laughed throatily.
“What do you mean?” Chas asked, confused.
Penny squeaked: “They saw—they saw us at the wedding, Chas,” Penny blurted.
“Not all of them,” Channah clarified. “But a number of the most important. They expect you to be mortified at the wedding, obviously. It’s important they see their Queen is completely in charge and on top of her little sisterwives. But now that they’ve seen you broken and humiliated at my hand, I want them to see you uplifted, enriched… beautified. So they know what I’m capable of, and they know that serving me faithfully is the key to their own success and happiness.”
She stopped on the second stair, looking over her shoulder at them to make sure she had their full attention. Her face was as serious as the mysterious sweating sickness that had plagued England since Bosworth. “When I’m not making an example out of you to show them my power, you’re my representatives. My ambassadors. I expect perfect, ladylike behavior from you both. You’ve been trained for this for years, whether you realized what the training was for or not. Every one of my jawari has been: how to conduct yourself in public, including at formal ceremonies. I know the heels are higher than anything you’re used to, but heel height is an important symbol of rank in hell so you must wear them. Other than that, you have all the training and experience you need to behave flawlessly, and that’s what I insist upon. I chose you carefully because you have demonstrated that you have the necessary character, the necessary intellect, and the necessary desire. Do you little ladies understand?”
There would only have been one answer to that, even if they disagreed with her: “Yes, Domina.”
“Good. Make me proud, girls. Assume from the moment this door opens, until we close the door of my retreat, that you are being watched, follow my lead, mind your manners, and be the princesses Sindonie has raised you to be.”
“Yes, Domina!” they answered, with greater confidence, and she nodded her head sharply in approval, opening the door.
The chapel was not quite back to its original condition, but it was getting there, the high open windows slowly but surely doing their work of airing it out. The. moment the door opened, Penny also saw the light, the burning reddish-orange glow of the fires of hell, softly muted here like the heat from a fire-warmed stone tucked under insulating blankets in the winter beds of those fortunate enough to have servants.
Their Domina stepped down the double-height stair and steadied each girl’s arm as she followed suit. There were hazy red figures milling about in the orange glow that filled the center of the room, but they seemed distant and fluid, like mirages on the horizon that you could never quite reach.
Sensing her girls’ nervousness, Channah stood between them, tucking an arm through each girl’s elbow and gripping them reassuringly before leading them forward. She whispered, primarily to Penny: “This time it will be different. You won’t just perceive Hell from Earth. I will carry you to Hell with me. You will experience more intensely and fully than at our wedding, because then you remained entirely on Earth, despite your acute senses. This time, with every step forward, Hell will become more real and Earth, less so.”
Both girls nodded, too nervous to think to respond.
Literature Section “06-55 Hella Honeymoon XII”—Part 55 of Chapter Six, “Le Saccage de la Sale Bête Rouge” (“Rampage of the Dirty Red Beast”)—1105 words—Accompanying Images: 1572-1575—Published 2025-04-08—©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.
