PREVIOUSLY: Esmeray is shackled by the ankles overlooking the sea of devils and demons, restrained from falling down into the chasm they inhabit, only by a waist-high guard rail. Hong is knowingly pushing the touch-shy Esmeray’s boundaries by holding her hands and pressing up against her back. NOW:
“Can you abide… more?” Hong whispered, a beat before shuffling even closer, slowly guiding—too gently to call it ‘pushing’—Esmeray’s hands forward and in front of her, and resting her head against the side of Esmeray’s, with her chin on Esmeray’s shoulder. A bit taller, as she was a bit older, the two women fit well where they were, Hong on the platform and Esmeray on the bar her ankles were shackled to.
Hong settled softly into the embrace. If she had wanted to clasp her own hands around the front of Esmeray, they were close enough to one another to do so; but she accepted Esmeray’s hands, holding hers almost like mittens, accepting the limitations Esmeray put on her.
“Are you matching my breathing?!” Esmeray asked suddenly, stiffening again.
But Hong laughed, softly and unthreateningly. “Very good! I am. It’s a relaxation technique.” And before Esmeray could go down that avenue any further, she began to explain: “The damned, you probably know from your human religion—do you have one?”
“I’m… familiar with Islam. Less so with Christianity.”
“The damned are in hell to suffer. Their suffering is constant, unending, and unrelieved here. Each of the demon races of hell are especially attuned to one human weakness, and expert in exploiting it. For the succubae…”
“Lust,” Esmeray said, her voice as stiff and wooden as her posture.
“Yes. And when I say ‘succubae,’ you understand the term may also usually include incubi. She gently moved her arms more tightly around Esmeray. “If women bother you—try to ignore me,” she whispered softly. “This means nothing to me, and I will be content if I can help it mean nothing to you. Concentrate on breathing, slowly and regularly.”
Esmeray wanted to tell her it already meant nothing to her, but although she had learned to lie—with great facility—to survive, it still wasn’t in her nature to prefer it, or even adopt it unconsciously or unnecessarily. It was a tool, not a rush. And she teetered on the edge of too many precipices she couldn’t quite bring herself to look over, to seek mendacity in the things she could allow herself to experience. So she said nothing, but instead, dubiously tried to breathe more slowly, fighting and overriding her own irritation at a suggestion that felt patronizing to her, but perhaps was not.
“Yes. The damned brought here by the direct intervention of the succubae—consorting within dreams, or in person; penetrating the succubus if male, being penetrated by it if female—often enough or intensely enough to be husked, are the red devils. They are enslaved for all eternity to the succubae who seduced them. If the succubus—or incubus, or if they were seduced by more than one succubae, any one of the succubae who seduced them—is in hell, they sense them and are drawn inexorably towards them. The crowd here are probably all Fang’s, although they can get confused… their minds are not… reasonable the way ours are. More instinctual and stupid. Can you guess why?”
“Because they’re brainless morons, driven by their stupid dicks like all men,” Esmeray guessed.
Hong giggled. “Essentially correct—they chose to surrender their reason and their souls to lust in life, and so they remain here, bereft of the former and enslaved to the latter.”
“And when their master is on Earth?”
“Lost. Although they tend to stay where they are, or if they have the instinct to remember it, to collect where their slaver was last located in hell. Doubtless legions of Channah’s conquests are shuffling and slavering their way towards us from every corner of hell right now.” Hong, having a mean streak of her own, giggled again at the thought. “When Channah returns here with her girls after her honeymoon, many of the devils who were within a week’s walk will have finally joined Fang’s in attendance here.”
“And the soldiers? And you? Are you… dead?” Esmeray asked, her voice barely even rising in discomfort and willfully trying to ignore it as Hong repositioned her feet, so now her legs were pressing against Esmeray’s.
“In order—yes, the soldiers, my ladies’ maid (who you met at the brothel door), and the other denizens of hell who retain their human form here, are dead and damned. But unlike their red counterparts, they were not husked in life. They were either damned by their own lust for, or fornication with, other Earth creatures; or they sinned in life at the behest, seduction, or command of succubae.”
“You’re talking about operatives.” It was a flat statement, not a question.
Hong laughed softly. “I think so. Does that bother you?”
“I was born bad,” Esmeray whispered. “I knew where I was headed before the succubae took me in.”
“Although the succubae are a bit cagey about it, they do consistently claim we have free will as long as we are alive.”
“And I’ve always exercised mine to be evil,” Esmeray growled. “But that doesn’t mean I want to dwell on it.”
“Right you are,” Hong conceded, moving along. “But no, the qahramanat, the jawari, and the mamalik—everyone with an operative’s job, is an operative. A living soul, trained to serve the succubae on Earth, since unlike the succubae, none of their dead servants can leave hell. I, and all my little boy-girls, are alive.”
“You serve her on Earth… but you’re in hell?”
“Like you. Visiting. For this.” And Esmeray knew she meant the hetaraslakos, and… whatever it was that was going on here. Before she could ask, Esmeray explained: “Hell is a place of banishment and suffering. Those are the only reasons it exists. I don’t know if there’s… science, or magic, or simply the corrupted or complete absence of Dao—what you would call God—behind it. The succubae are very cagey about it all. But the way I can understand it, is that each hell exists to torture; and thus torture is the essence of each hell, its sustaining force—it’s fuel. In this, the Hell of Lust, punishing the lusty for their lust gives this place, and its masters the succubae, their purpose, and therefore their power. Every measure of a succubus is taken and given by the amount of misery they can twist from lust.”
Esmeray gasped with understanding. “And somehow… this place intensifies what we do here, and what we do here… tortures the damned!”
“Yesss!” Hong nodded, pleased with her student. “Here, we enjoy everything they want most, the things their entire existence has been reduced to by their worldly surrender to lust, but can never, never, ever have again.”
“We’re whores,” Esmeray concluded bitterly. “Dancing-girl whores. I think I may be dead and damned, whether you are or not.”
Hong laughed gaily. “Please! We’re qahramanat—madames, circus lion-tamers, dominatrices, whatever you want to call us. We may be part of the entertainment, but we’re not the ones putting out. The jawari are the whores. Remember, the purpose of whores—pornoi—is to serve men’s lust. On Earth, that is physical, and women can do it despite their indifference. In Hell, it is spiritual: the devils—all, or virtually all, male at the castles of huskers like Channah and Fang—are reacting not to our female bodies, but to the amount of lust—that’s their desire, not their satisfaction—that we can wring out of our poor little boybitches. We magnify the devils’ agony by magnifying the lust they can sense but never slake.”
“I understand,” Esmeray sounded surprised. “But it still doesn’t explain why Channah chose me as one of these—” she struggled and accepted the least-objectionable of Hong’s analogies “—lion-tamers. Unless her real purpose is to humiliate us.”
“I didn’t mean to bury the lead. The damned exist here to be tortured. The only thing they are capable of in hell, is suffering. They are more than their suffering, but suffering is the only action they can take here. They respond to lust, and they respond to cruelty. That’s why I’m good at my work: I like sex, and I like torturing helpless little bitchboys who are stupid enough to let me know they crave me. The jawari of the succubae, mmm…” Esmeray could feel her smile, imagine her closing her eyes as she reveled in her thoughts. “They’re raised for this. Like veal calves, or hothouse flowers. Their lust, and their agony—physical but especially mental—interact to magnify the suffering of the devils, and thus the amount of power they send back. Our purpose is not to sate the lust of our jawari, but to magnify, thwart, twist, and whip it into a frenzy of suffering beyond all reason.”
“And so the devils react to me…”
“Ohh, girl… I’m still working that out. I’m not sure even the succubae understand it fully yet. I suspect you’re an experiment. But I think it’s the utter contempt, loathing, and hatred you feel for men, and our boys, especially when they become aroused. I can feel it… I’m sure the devils do, too. And you hate the devils directly, too, because you hate their lust. It may be your hatred for your jawari and the devils, combined with their lust for you, that is setting the damned on fire.” She shook her head, as if to clear it. “If Channah brought you here to punish you, I assure you it is only because somehow by punishing you, she punishes the devils and extracts more power from them.”
At that very moment, Hong’s jawari chorused as one: “Your Grace!”
And when Esmeray looked back over her shoulder, she saw the largest and strongest woman she had ever seen or even heard of.
Literature Section “06-102 The Lust and Misery of the Damned”—more material available at TheRemainderman.com—Part 102 of Chapter Six, “Le Saccage de la Sale Bête Rouge” (“Rampage of the Dirty Red Beast”)—1623 words—Accompanying Images: 1848-1851—Published 2025-05-29 [slipped to 12:44am 05-30]—©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.