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.
Ride and Die
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.