Limbo 56 - Mike Morris (if you give a mouse a cookie read aloud TXT) 📗

of anxious supplicants, winding into the distance. Perspectives were distorted here and the corridor seemed to go on forever. He began pushing past the jostling line of scarecrows. They’re supplicants, he realized, anxious for some reward that lies at the far end of the corridor. There were loud protests until he told them who he was. Somehow, they sensed that he was different and let him through. The line wound round a corner, then another, and finally he was at a glass door with ‘Recruiter’ painted on it. Through the glass, he saw a room, just like all the others, but with a beefy man sitting behind a desk.

Arthur shoved his way in and faced the beefy man. “No-one comes in until they’re told,” the beefy man rumbled. “Get out, or you’ll be sent to the end of the line.”

“I’m the Recruiter here, and the Governor,” Arthur told him. “Who the Hell are you, and what’s going on.”

The man looked up, frowning. “How did you get here?” he demanded.

“I’m the Governor. Are you telling me that I can’t be here?”

The man blinked. “No, of course not, Governor,” he said. “Wait just a minute.” He picked up a heavy black telephone and spoke into it without dialing. “The Governor’s here,” he said. He listened nervously to the voice on the other end, swallowing occasionally. Arthur couldn’t make out the words, but there was no mistaking the smooth tone. He snatched the phone from the big man.

“…too dim to figure out what’s going on,” he heard Jasper say.

“What,” he roared, and bit his tongue. A hundred years as a politician in Limbo should have taught him enough to hold his tongue and continue to listen to the unsuspecting Jasper.

“Fat fool,” Jasper said without missing a beat. “I was just telling him that he should have expected a snap inspection of the new recruitment office. In fact, I was going to make one myself. Well,” he finally paused. “What do you think of it?”

‘I think you’re a liar, and I think you’re up to no good.’ But this time Arthur didn’t speak out loud. He had the distinct feeling that he was in enemy territory. He was surrounded by hundreds of ragged citizens, none of whom he recognized, in the middle of a warren of dilapidated buildings that he didn’t remember seeing before. He couldn’t be harmed, but he could be detained. “I don’t recognize anybody here,” he said, hoping he sounded dim enough.

“Of course not, Governor,” Jasper said heartily. “You’re a busy man. You can’t expect to be everywhere at once. That’s why I’m here, to help with the myriad small problems while you wrestle with the larger tasks of Government.” He was obviously laying the flattery on with a ladle, but then, he obviously thought Arthur too dense to notice. “Now you’ve seen the place,” Jasper continued, “Why don’t we get together, and I’ll fill in the details.”

“I’m tired right now,” Arthur said, surprising himself. Obviously, in a hundred years, he had learnt a little of diplomacy, or lying, as it was called here in Limbo56. “I’m going back to my place to get some rest. Let’s meet tomorrow morning.”

“Alright,” Jasper sounded a little dubious. “Let me talk to Wally.”

Wally listened expressionlessly to the muted sounds from the phone. At last he hung up and addressed Arthur. “Just come this way please.”

A small closet stood in the corner of the room, looking like an upended coffin. Wally opened it and gestured for Arthur to enter. Arthur hesitated. There were hundreds of unknown, probably unfriendly men outside, lining the corridor, probably blocking the staircases of the maze-like building. “Alright,” he said, stepping in. The door swung shut, leaving him in darkness, and the closet plunged down before stopping so abruptly that his knees cracked. He took a breath and waited for the door to open, but it didn’t. Instead, after a few seconds, there was a curious dragging noise and his coffin-like prison started to move sideways. It stopped shortly after, and the door swung open. Rain sprayed his face, and lightning blinded him momentarily, illuminating the square shape of the foundry in the distance. He stepped cautiously into the street.

Sighing, he started towards the foundry. He had entered through the massive front entrance and had been tipped out of a little side door, he thought angrily, striding through the rain. Abruptly he stopped. The fat man had disposed of him in the direction of the foundry. He had started plodding, like a sleepwalker, away from Rotten Row and its rotten houses, and whatever mystery lay there. He had already gotten halfway back to the foundry.

Snarling, he began to retrace his steps. As he approached the recruiting office, he veered away from the building. It seemed best to avoid the place. He ducked down an alley that ran roughly parallel to Rotten Row, hoping that Jasper was not aware of his whereabouts. A stream of carelessly hurled slops whooshed down in front of him, splashing his feet. Furious he looked up. He hoped that this was not Jasper’s way of warning him off. Then, looking at the dirty crooked houses, he was reassured. Here, slop dodging would probably be a minor annoyance, possibly a macabre game for pedestrians and slop-throwers alike.

He plowed on as the rain diminished, turning towards Rotten Row when the recruitment building was behind him. The Row was now seriously battered. Missing cobblestones gave way to huge potholes, some looking like bomb craters, deep holes with steam escaping. Gingerly he threaded his way down the blasted street. It was like a war zone. Red-eyed rats peered at him and huge cockroaches scuttled across the street. They were climbing up from Hell, he thought, where rats and cockroaches, snakes and crocodiles lived.

Ahead of him, a white wall of fog stretched across the deteriorating road. He stopped in front of it. His eyes could not penetrate this solid wall. He looked back at the potholes and the rats. Rotten Row was an upside-down minefield. Rather than being blown up, he would be sucked down one of the bottomless potholes – straight to hell. He had a nightmare vision of stepping through a wall of fog, and falling down into the bowels of the earth, into the kingdom of Hell. He started to back away, and remembered Jasper’s tinny telephone voice – ‘too dim to realize what’s going on.’

Cautiously, he slid his right foot across the line, then the left. The fog was an inch from his nose. He leant forward and the fog surrounded him. It was warm and blinding, like fine ash. He looked down. His feet were invisible. He took a step forward and the fog surrounded him. He stood rooted, knowing that he could not go on. He exhaled slowly, telling himself that, if he hit a pothole he could pull himself free. He knew, with certainty that he was finally going to Hell. He turned; ready to step back into the squalor of Rotten Row, a place infinitely better than Hell. Then he turned, again – and again, until he had no idea where or what he was facing. He might take one step into Hell, walk forever in the mist, or come out the other side. He knew that if he emerged in Rotten Row he would never be able to return.


Chapter 27 – Dirty Politics
Resolutely, he strode ahead and found himself on a broad highway. It ran, white and unworn, straight as an arrow to what looked like a mirror image of the foundry. Now he felt the heat, through the soles of his shoes, seeping up through the concrete. Lining the road were lush, blue-green trees, but curving, trembling trees that looked like overripe fruit. Trees, Arthur thought grimly, that a Devil might construct in a vain attempt to mimic a real tree, trees that might fool a poor soulless creature who had spent a long, long time in Hell.

In the distance, he could see what looked like a train station and what might have been a train, puffing smoke. He stepped off the road and moved cautiously through the trees. He stopped in astonishment. Behind a single row of blue trees was a vast canvas, painted in bilious colors, a mad forest probably painted by the creator of the slimy trees. Distastefully, he brushed tree-slime from his hand and a layer of skin, hardened by years of foundry work, sloughed off, leaving a pink, slightly irritated palm. Keeping away from the trees, he hurried towards the station.

As he approached, he saw that the low structure was more like an entrance to a mineshaft. Clouds of dirty smoke belched out, smudging the already greasy suit of an anxious-looking man who was wearing a ridiculous top hat. Arthur, whose mind was working at top speed after his encounter with the mist and the livid trees, deduced immediately that under the hat was a pair of very long, very sharp horns. Arthur hid, yards away, and watched.

Presently there was a distant groan from way down the shaft, like some weary animal trying to escape from a trap. Arthur felt a slight shaking of the earth under his feet, and the groan became louder. The top-hatted demon shuffled impatiently as the elevator ground its way upward. Obviously, this job was distasteful to him. Finally, a huge cage emerged from the smoke filled with human debris. About a hundred cringing inhabitants of the netherworld clung to each other and to the flimsy ropes that separated them from the open shaft. Even as he looked, one of them, jostled by the impatient crowd, slid under the ropes and went wailing into the darkness. The elevator stopped with a violent jolt almost throwing a couple of the others down the shaft, and a pathetic mass of bodies disgorged itself onto the road. The last lost soul barely made it onto the surface before the elevator shot down again in a final puff of smoke.

“Oh, you poor pathetic creatures,” the demon said wringing his hands and sobbing. “Oh, you poor dears.” The demon wrung his hands again, looking like a satisfied pawnbroker. “You are safe now,” it said, “in this beautiful P.p.p place. It was a pitiful piece of acting, but the men and women gaping at the bilious trees and grey sky were in no condition to judge. They shuffled, gaping, as the demon went into his prepared speech. Arthur strained to hear over the nervous chatter of the new arrivals, and heard only snatches of what the Demon said.

There was something about an election, and voting, and a temporary stay in Limbo. “And a finer Limbo you will never see,” the demon orated with absolute truth. Some of the creatures looked mystified, obviously never having heard of voting, elections, or Government, and the demon said impatiently that he would instruct them in full shortly. If they followed their instructions, he told them, they would ascend. The demon glanced nervously upward, and the newcomers were marched on to the road, with the demon leading the way.

Arthur followed them thoughtfully, hidden in the bilious trees. He was aware that their instructions would be to vote for Jasper, along with all the other refugees from Hell. Jasper, once in control, would deliver Limbo56 to Hell. Then, he would move on to subvert bigger and better Limbos.

The demon marched them up to the mist. “Line up behind me, single file,” he bellowed. “Place your hands on the shoulder of the person ahead.” He turned and faced them, baring his rather pointed teeth. “Anyone who doesn’t follow exactly in my footsteps will