Any artists around who want to replace this cheesy AI art in exchange for a permanent link to your homepage?
“About time,” Barney grumbled as the lewdly designated unisex bathroom door finally opened.
Saul sauntered out with his crimson concierge coat slung over his shoulder like a red haired Travolta. He smiled wickedly to provoke suspicion, and then winked just as the noxious fumes roiling in his wake wafted up and assaulted Barney’s plump white nose.
“Oh fuck me… You really are demonic,” Barney complained, raising his voice barely above his usual sulking soul volume.
Saul cackled all the way back to the welcome desk, and didn’t stop cackling until Barney’s black wingtip shoe clopped the back of his neatly combed head. “Eh! Shit-flinging goblin crotch - it’s snowing again!”
Barney compared the prospects of the fouled restroom with a trip to the window to confirm Saul’s meteorological aside. It wasn’t a tough decision, so he abandoned the restroom and one-shoed his way over to the large picture window overlooking Hell. All he could do was shake his head at all the falling snowflakes. “We’re getting more of this white crap than usual.”
Saul joined his coworker at the window. “Who was it this time?” he asked as he slid his arms back into his jacket. As always he made sure to keep his black skull cufflinks and fingernail buttons properly aligned and shined.
Barney withdrew a crinkled white note from the front pocket of his own uniform pants and watched the smoky black ink swirl about to form new words. “Ah,” Barney said. “Donny finally let Tricia drive the GTO.”
Saul rubbed his hands together. “Oh those two. How old are they now?”
Barney checked the note. “79 and… Tricia’s 77.”
Saul cackled again. “The old bat can’t see. They should be here any m-”
“Hello?” asked a very pleasant sounding lady.
“Wow. That was faster than I thought,” Saul said as he turned to greet the newcomers with a toothy smile.
Barney sighed and headed for the skeletal welcome desk just inside the ever ominous black gates. “Hello, Tricia. Hello, Donny.” He hooked his shoe with his big toe and then shimmied his foot back in with some difficulty. He hadn’t bothered undoing the laces before using it as a javelin.
“Who the hell are you?” Donny asked. He was wearing a pastel golf ensemble to match Tricia’s.
“Who the Hell are you?” Saul asked, obviously savoring the irony. He put his elbows on the desk and leaned over the edge. “Ya know, Donny, you’ve been wearing that same sissified golf get-up once a year since 1989, and I’ve been wondering… Where’d she put yer balls?”
“Now you listen here, buddy… Just do your damn job and don’t worry about me.” Donny didn’t like Saul’s attitude, apparently. Barney lifted his eyebrows appreciatively.
Saul grinned devilishly when he heard damn job. “When hell freezes over, eh Donny? Isn’t that what you told her?”
Donny glanced around at his bleak surroundings, took a long look out the window, and then had himself an epiphany. “Oh Jeeeeeeeeeeesus!”
Saul wagged his head. “Nope. Sorry, bub. Take another stab at it.”
Tricia adjusted her glasses to a new position on her sunburnt nose and gaped at the frozen hell scape outside. “What? No. No. It can’t be. This place doesn’t exist, I know it doesn’t. And it couldn’t possibly freeze over.”
“Well, he did let you drive the GTO,” Saul reminded her.
“But… No. I’m sorry, it can’t be. This can’t be. It’s a dream,” Tricia said.
“Right,” Donny agreed. “It’s just a dream. We wouldn’t belong in a place like this with the likes of you two.” Barney pointed a skinny pink finger at himself inquisitively, but Donny ignored him. “We wouldn’t end up here. No. Not us. Not here.”
“Well, actually…” Barney said as he collected the long list of deeds streaming out of Hell’s ancient printer.
“Well Hell’s Bells! Look at that!” Saul chimed giddily.
“Do you really have to say it every time?” Barney grumbled.
“Every damn time,” Saul said. He peeked at the list. “Corporate lawyer annnnd…an art professor slash activist. Hell of an odd couple.” When no one else laughed, he gave himself a little high five and a round of applause.
“Excuse me,” Tricia interrupted. “May I see?”
Barney shrugged and handed the list over the desk. Donny leaned in close to read over his wife’s shoulder. Saul leaned close too, but only to tally up their liver spots and show Barney the count with his fingers.
Barney rolled his eyes and left Saul to his rude task, tuning out the well is that really so bads and the but we apologized to so-and-so for thats. Once he was back at the window, he took a deep breath and watched the blizzard grow. The flakes were as big as golf balls now, and not even the fires of Mount Lucifer could be seen through the whiteout. Or could they? There was a shadow, and it seemed to be flickering about rather sinisterly.
“What is that?” Barney asked no one in particular. He put his hands up over his eyes to block out the interior lighting and pressed his nose to the glass.
The shadow stirred furiously about in the blizzard, and then… THUNK!
Barney scrambled backward and cried out. “AahooooowwwnooooooohoooomyGod!”
A giant furry figure was standing on the other side of the window with its snotty black nose pressed to the glass just opposite of where Barney’s had been, a position the beast had leaned far down to accomplish. The thing had bloody white fur and hungry blue eyes.
Saul called gleefully from the desk. “Hellfire and brimstone, it’s a damned yeti!”
“What’s that doing down here?” Donny asked with a guffaw, clearly assuming it was more evidence that he was only dreaming.
Saul was more than happy to respond. “Well, see, it’s a cold day in Hell, Donny.”
Just then there was a purple flash in the sky, and a frightening explosion shook the gaudy silver plated floor of Lucifer’s Foyer.
“Thunder snow…” Barney said. “This is a big one.”
“Wakíŋyaŋ,” Tricia declared proudly as she arrived with Saul and her husband to see the yeti up close. “In Lakota they call thunder Wakíŋyaŋ.”
“Oh... Well… Good for you,” Barney grumbled derisively.
“So what’s with the storm? What happened this time?” Saul asked. “The NBA owners apologized for throwing Hong Kong under the bus?”
Barney remembered his note and read it as the ink swirled. “Donny and Tricia’s son William posthumously forgave Donny for… Oh for the love of… Donny! You tried to secretly clone your own daughter in law?!”
Tricia defended her husband dutifully. “For Billy! So he would never have to be alone!”
Saul shook his head as he found the corresponding entry on the official bill of sins, which stretched some forty feet all the way from the desk. “Uh uh. Nnnope. Not according to the big guy. Says here that’s why you thought he was doing it, but uh…no.”
“Yea, and that wasn’t all,” Barney interrupted. “Billy also forgave Donny for crafting a deal to sell millions of personal DNA files to a Chinese firm, knowing full well the firm was connected to a Chinese bioweapons lab. On a related note, Billy found it particularly difficult to forgive Tricia for illegally collecting the DNA of all the white students at her university….to help with the future disposal of whiteness.”
Calm and cool as could be, Tricia said, “Well there are too many white people.”
Saul snorted. “Heh. Heh. Heh heh. Ohhh. Heh. Oh man. Oh damn. This is good.”
Donny and Tricia stood side by side and faced off with Barney and Saul as if this were a mere social mixer they could conquer with some dubious soap opera scheme.
When Saul took that in, he practically exploded. “BAHAH!”
“And just what is so funny?” Donny asked.
“Well,” Saul started. “It’s just that Lucifer has been keeping an open mind down here, always searching for new ideas from the best and brightest on Earth. He sees himself as something of a humanist, like Pacino said in the movie? Remember? Anyway, he has a lot of empathy for all humans, ya know, and he doesn’t want Hell to be any worse than it has to be.”
“What’s yer point?” Donny prodded impatiently.
Tricia formed a vapid smile and said, “Well good for Lucifer for being a lifelong student.”
Saul couldn’t contain himself anymore and broke into a giggling fit, so the power couple aimed their attention at Barney.
Barney sighed. “This is the whites only Hell, Tricia, you won’t find any diversity here. Everyone else is in the other Hell. It’s their safe space.”
Saul snorted so hard he choked.
“Well if that’s what it takes for the oppressed classes to flourish…” Tricia and Donny said almost simultaneously.
Barney’s mouth fell open. “Flourish? In Hell?” He couldn’t believe what he was hearing. “I can’t do this anymore. I just can’t. God help me, I can’t, just send me back Purgatory, I’ll serve my time th-” Just that instant, faster than any blink, Barney disappeared.
Tricia stared blankly into the empty space Barney had vacated, and after a few seconds her eyebrows furrowed slightly as an idea came to her. “Oh God. God oh God. I can’t take it, I’m so very sorry, I never meant any harm, oh please take me back to Earth, give me another life, let me live forever.”
Donny rolled his eyes. “Oh give it a rest, Tricia, you’re a damn monster and everyone knows it.”
Saul, cackling and trying desperately to stay on task, waved his hand to have them follow. Off they went into a very frozen Hell, where they wouldn’t find a single golf course.
[The Contest]
Haha love this! Great work.
https://getyarn.io/yarn-clip/86453575-13ac-48c9-88e8-b291a92a8374/gif
Brett Dill you are my hero. Not only did you have me with your plea for real art, but your story was hysterical. You started with a rather nice image of grandpa letting grandma drive the muscle car and immediately descended into mayhem. What could be better? Only cloning and killing off the white race. The ending was icing on the cake. Thank you