Another Inferno

When the angry talons of summer raked the city; when the faces on the street began to melt away, leaving shocked waxy masks of bone; when the blood of the world began to boil; when the only voices heard on the streets were the “we told you so!” cries of the Fourth Coming; this is the day when Omar Bekh came to the town of Mirakech.

The townsfolk -- ample contortionists all -- had oozed their bodies into the cracks of the world. The eyes of merchants came up from the abysses of shattered pavement on thin stalks. Voices were muttered from throats twisted to fit the nearest shade, voices which sounded hardly human, offering delights which were impossible.

Omar nodded to these waxen shapes, their flesh runny, their minds burned beyond recognition. "Why do I not feel this pain?" he asked. Frightened eyes had no reply.

Even indoors, the heat was unbearable. Stone buildings which had once been a relief now acted as ovens, intensifying the hateful ultraviolent claws of the enemy. Yet it was in one of these buildings, its name burned off the sign over the door, that Omar Bekh met the last whole man of Mirakech.

The bartender at this hellfire tavern stood wiping glasses behind the counter, his skin burned magenta, his eyes fiery and defiant on his sooty face. "A customer!" he exclaimed, as Omar came through the double doors. He wiped a handful of sweat from his face, and stood there, amazed at the sight. Then he burst into action, remembering his old routines like the reruns of a passing stage-play. "What'll it be? What'll you have?"

Omar pulled himself onto a seat and muttered, "Orakal." The place stank of alcohol fumes, and splatters of humanity covered many of the seats. It was a wonder that the entire place didn't explode.

"Orakal," the barkeep repeated, "Orak Ale, Ale of the Uruk. Good brew from a forgotten land. Are you travelling north or south? Coming or going? My name is Century. Century Karl."

"Desperate times call for desperate names."

Karl looked at his customer warily, then grinned a boiling grin. "Hold on a sec." He went to the end of the bar, where a man-sized splatter was dripped over the counter. After some effort, Karl managed to rearrange the putty so that the pinker areas faced down. "I have to keep flipping him over, or he'll bake clean through."

"Let him bake."

"He owes me money."

"So take it. What good is money anymore?"

"He was a customer! Where would we be if we all started stealing from our customers?"

"Where I come from, that would be considered 'business as usual'. A bloodthirsty place."

Karl nodded, and slapped down a steaming mug of ale. "Most of my stock has evaporated. This stuff should be plenty ... potent."

"Freshly distilled by Mother Nature, as we speak. I notice you're collecting the condensation as it trickles down the walls. Plan to patent your own brew when all this is over?"

"Haha. Do you expect it to end?"

"No. I was there when it happened. I was just an assistant, I swear!" He raised a thick, menacing finger. "I just wanted to make that clear from the beginning."

"Like I care. But I'm always in the mood for a good story, or a bad one. So you don't buy this 'Fourth Coming' story, hmm?"

"Fourth Coming of what? It doesn't take gods and devils for the climate to change. In fact, if this was a caring universe, gods and devils would prevent this genocide."

"Blasphemy. The argument is 10,000 years old, anyway. You're lucky I'm used to foreigners with crazy ideas, or I'd poison your next mug." Then he grinned: just kidding.

"Besides, you're all half a world away from where the action was. Your people never developed the technology to understand what happened, and I wish we hadn't, either!" He took a long swallow, and scalded his innards. Yet it was the first pain he'd felt in months. Months of watching the ruin of the world ... he almost smiled.

"I should point out that you're about the 20th person to tell me they were 'there' when 'it' happened." He wiped out another glass for yet another customer who would never arrive.

Omar slammed the bar, and distant glasses hopped. "But I was THERE. I've walked the world for half a year, feeling nothing. Watching the faces melt and crawl away to die -- counting the puddles that were the size of children. I walked day and night, with damnable eyes hating me from every crack as I went, because they were almost destroyed, and I could feel nothing.

"In Samaria, I stayed with a family who seemed stable. Some people, like you and me, seem unaffected as the heat increases. It is nonsensical, but true. We are few and far between, as though each town was destined to have a single mad survivor; maybe these survivors would come together in the desert, or the cracked sands of the ocean floor, and start a new life for this world. These few survivors are blessed or damned or both. Nobody cares which.

"Anyway, I spent some time with a nice couple from Samaria. When we were out of money, we simply went out on the streets and took what we needed. When the eyes had all scurried away, we began to eat the wood of the town, like termites.” He shook his head at the ugly memories. “One day I was holding their child, Twanda, and the baby girl began to melt in my hands. One drip at a time. I tried to hold all the pieces together, but they plopped to the floor, oozing between my arms. My fingers couldn't hold the sliding pieces together. Her head rolled off and stuck to the sheets of her bed, her arms fell to the floor and tried to find knotholes in the wood to hide in. By the time I put her down, there was nothing left of her, and her mother had seen the entire thing.

"I pleaded that it wasn't my fault, but they called me a devil and cast me out in the street. I knew I would never rest again. My flesh had become thick, but I tried to shave it down to normal, hoping to feel something. Nothing worked. Does this sound like the story of a madman? Or someone faking knowledge of things beyond belief?"

Karl tried an uncomfortable smile. "Words like 'hysterical' come to mind. But these days, mere hysterics would make you as stable as me." He looked longingly at the shattered, warped glass, and almost-visible fumes of his broken world. His face drooped from time to time, and he scooped it back into shape with his fingers. "I've resigned to serving whoever comes through that door, however many years down the road. I am in no hurry. I make no particular demands of anyone. My family is gone, but I go on. It is no miracle. The rationalists say that the climate has always been changing. Whether I believe them or not is irrelevant. I suppose your story is something different yet?"

"Time itself has been erased. Overwritten. Not exactly." Omar searched the room, looking for clues. One of the melted shapes got up and snailed through the double doors. "Slowed! That's the word, more or less. It was supposed to be a local experiment, but some obscure resonance property of the atmosphere interfered, and the thing became global. We're going about half as fast through the universal timeflow as we used to go, so we're bombarded with about twice as much radiation for each 'second' of our time. That's the theory Dr. Samitus told me as he was withering away. It was his idea, his demon. But now the chapter ends, and we leave the world to the insects, and the machines."

"I give you great credit for you ingenuity. If truth was always stranger than fiction, I would be forced to believe your story above all others."

For a moment, Omar felt himself growing angry, then they laughed together at the insanity of it all.

Karl slid him another brew. This one was not quite boiling. "The most common tale is that we're all in Hell. In fact, you may have passed the fiery gates on the way into town. Someone built the gates as a gag. It is said that each stone is a tortured soul, reduced to clay. There are so many of these stones around town. This place may once have been called Dante's Pit, or someday in the future. Welcome to the Second Circle ... will you be paying for these by cash, check, or soul-credit?"

"Keep it up. After a while, the gags may become the reality. I can see it now: you build a Hell for people to laugh at. A century from now, people find only the terrifying symbols, and write a horrible story to fit the pieces. Yet the insects keep going, and the machines never sleep."

Karl pushed his face back into place again. "But you can go see the gates ... they're real."

"So are the ruins of the lab of Dr. Samitus, except the machine-demons won't let you near it. They cast fire and brimstone -- forgotten arts of war -- and cannot be bargained with." Omar seemed distant as he mumbled these words, as though he had felt a cold breeze coming from somewhere in his past, and was afraid to return to the present.

"We live in an amazing world. Can't say I'm enjoying it, but there are no alternatives, so ..."

Omar looked suddenly full of energy. "Why don't you join me on my quest for Nothingness?"

Karl waved an arm, as though encompassing the ruins of his bar in a big, unhappy embrace. "No thanks. I have quite enough emptiness here. In fact, this could be the place you've been looking for all this time."

"No. If I've found it, it can't be the place."

"You never know ..."

"I do know!" Anger welled up inside him. He could not tolerate having his motives questioned. But he could not explain his fury.

Karl nodded faintly, with the sense of having discovered a well-buried secret, a talent unique to barkeeps and con-artists. "Atonement ... you must suffer for something you have done."

Omar said nothing. He scattered some coins on the bar, and turned to leave.

"Don't go!"

Omar turned at the doorway, his huge frame seeming both indestructible and damned. His face showed a weariness unparalleled anywhere on this miserable world.

Karl pointed a shaking finger at his guest. "It was your experiment, wasn't it? You were telling me the truth."

"There is no truth anymore. It was the first thing to burn." The big man shuffled through the door, and one or two melted heads turned to watch him go.

Karl wondered about the world, gathering glasses. He wiped away the rings, and went to flip his next-best customer again. "I'll be here if you change your mind!" he called to the doorway.

The tired wind did not answer, but the freezing night was about to begin. He wondered about his strange 'friend' on the road, then the first of the killing winds rattled his bones, and he began to barricade his shop.

"Times are tough," he said to the most alert lump of flesh in the place. "But that's why there are survivors."

=== END ===

Written 6/27/93. Published in Not One of Us #22 (1999) and "Blank Spaces & other dangers" (collection) (2006)