Damned

Upon arrival within arm's length of the heinous demon, if truth be told, I am not surprised to find myself standing alone. The entire lot of them, my legions of cads and gladiators, despite their machetes and bravado, do tremble and withdraw. Even my second in command, the punk Archer, falters in his bold attack. The whisper of his sage advice no longer hissing in my ear.

Pity the poor demon with but its single strategy to win. In the same handicapped way Jane Eyre must remain meek and stoic, this demonic Baal knows only one way to exist: by being fearsome. While I exist plastic to change and adapt, tailoring my battle plan to each new moment, Baal can never dissolve an enemy into helpless laughter, nor charm a foe by using extraordinary beauty. Therefore, when we neglect to fear such a brittle monstrosity, we render it powerless.

Issuing a war whoop far more Grace Poole than Jane Eyre, I launch myself boldly and squarely toward Baal's porcine thorax. In accordance with my long-ago, school-mandated rape-prevention training, I execute a two-pronged offensive against the demon's stony eyes and tender pork genitals, gouging the former and stomping my stiletto heels upon the latter. Paying no heed to the until-now careful preservation of my neat and clean appearance, I snatch up a handful of the corroded razor blades which pave the ground and commence to slash and claw, my efforts bringing forth a flood of piggish blood. The stench of the demon's exposed, ruptured viscera is the reek of the charnel house. A fog of spouting slaughterhouse blood and killing-floor screams ensues. The offal flies in wide arcs, Grand Guignol style, and even the Hellish orange sky is racked by Baal's squealing protest.

It's a little-known fact, but demons are only slightly more difficult to defeat than despots or tyrants. Despite their immense size and fearsome appearance, demons lack any actual self-confidence. All of their advantage lies in bluster, hideous deformity, and putrid stink, and once those defenses are breached a demon has very little with which to back them up. The great pride of a demon is also its weakness. Like all bullies, at the point where it finds itself losing face, a demon most often takes flight.

What little that was left of Madison Spencer, movie-star scion, is lost in the subsequent savage flurry. Battling alone against the evil Baal, I am not unaware of the sullied hordes who, from a distance, witness my bold savagery. Assaulted with the unrelenting volley of my infantile slaps and girlish pokes, my churlish vocal taunts, the infuriating flurry of my wet willies and Indian burns, this fiercest of demons cries in panicked frustration. Subjected to my fearsome barrage of painful noogies, then my lightning-fast attack of titty twisters, my entire arsenal of grade-school insults, Baal wrestles to free himself. Following a particularly violent wedgie inflicted upon him, the demon unfurls his wrinkled, leathery wings and flees the scene of battle. Those batlike wings beating, beating the black smoke and clouds of houseflies, Baal races to vanish over the far orange horizon.

Thus I'm left standing alone at the sealed gates of headquarters but for only a moment. I savor the glory of being bathed, soaked, drenched with warm blood which is not my own.

Even before said blood can cool, a sole voice calls down from a window placed high in the locked battlements. A woman's voice calls, "Maddy? Is that you?" Little larger than the face which fills it, the window is situated so high that it takes a moment for my eyes to locate it, but there hovers the visage of an old woman, Mrs. Trudy Marenetti, most recently from Columbus, Ohio, who arrived in Hell by way of pancreatic cancer. She calls, "Hurray for little Madison!"

From another distant window, another face, that of Mr. Halmott, victim of congestive heart failure and Boise, Idaho, echoes the shout, "Hurray for little Maddy!"

From other windows, other battlements and turrets, a multitude of faces trumpet the name of Madison Spencer. Of these, some I recognize, but others I do not, for I've spoken to them only over the telephone, counseling them not to fear their imminent deaths. During my absence, these souls have been arriving in droves, transforming Hell into a veritable Ellis Island of new arrivals, shocked but not devastated by their demise, more curious than frightened, in fact eager to shed their former failing lives and embark upon some new enterprise. It would seem that I've recruited them. All of them, every one of these faces lauds me from their far-flung windows in the walls of Hell. They demand the gates be thrown open so that they might embrace me... their new hero.

Suddenly the very air is filled with sweetness as dead people shower me with Sugar Babies and malted-milk balls. In tribute they toss a sugary blizzard of Pez and Root Beer Barrels.