He ran a finger over the hot teeth of his son and removed his canines. Two long bloody fangs emerged through the gums.

“You have now become a vampiricsatyr! A new glory has dawned!”

At this, the demon grew excited and split the satyr’s cheeks with the snap of his fingers on both hands. He lovingly watched the blood flow down his face.

“My son!” shrieked the demon as he ran his fingers through the vampire satyr’s exposed brain. “I need to show you a vision of the last days (that were) of Earth. It is a hotel in The Decadent City.”

The satyr saw in his head (the demon played among the hot fibers of his brain as if it were an instrument) the most opulent hotel of all time. As he imagined that he was approaching the front of the hotel, he saw marble columns wrapped in gold overlay. As he went through the great hall, he saw satin curtains and lamps made of pure silver hanging from the ceiling forty feet above the ground. It was the last, great hotel.

The corridor was well-hung with what seemed to be silk tapestries, all done in the deepest reds and browns. The walls were liberally decorated with gold torches.

A doorman, sharply dressed in a suit with finely pressed edges, stood waiting before a door. Another man approached and showed him a card key.

“What is your pleasure, this evening, my lord?” the doorman asked.

“I’d love to see you in my chambers in five minutes in red briefs,” the man stated matter-of-factly.

“Your pleasure is my desire, my lord.”

The vision ended.

“Alas, my son,” the demon said, “the last decade of man’s mortal age was his best. You could never have accomplished in thirty thousand lifetimes what we can do with these indestructible bodies. That age was the only elegant, decadent century of man.”

“Why do you say that, Father?”

“Because, for the first time in history (although each generation before it assumed that it was the first freegeneration), mankind had finally managed to believe that guilt was just a farce that got in the way of living. Mankind finally cast off the costs of doing anything it desired — there was no fear of reprisal, no fear of dire consequences.

“There is Dark Logic here, my son. Learn it well.”

“There is something in my park, my son,” the demon screamed in horror, “that you must see to believe. Come and I will show you what takes place at the temple.”

They walked through a few thousand meters of burning jungle and came to a golden door that led into a stony hill. They stood to one side and waited. A figure in a black hooded robe approached the wall and spoke. “Oh Lord of my worship, please grant me admittance to your righteously extreme level of torture. Please allow this unworthy creature into your chambers!”

A tiny hatch above the door opened. A bloody hook shot forth and sank rapidly into the supplicant’s skull. The hook then quickly withdrew and pulled the shrieking disciple through the hole, cracking his bones and bursting his innards.

“Do you mean… ?” began the vampire satyr.

“Yessss,” the demon said. “There is religion here, e’en here. There are faction cults here the likes of ‘Those who love to torture those who love to have their legs amputated.’ The most sought-after honor cult is the one called, ‘Dulling the soul through flames.’”

“Oh, my G-”

The demon’s empty sockets flashed red. “Never attempt to say The Betrayer’s name here! Now I must punish you.”

Red mounted his son from behind and slammed him for a thousand times.

Later, he grabbed a small gold demon, found squirming among roasting stones, and took it from behind. It began to shriek even louder and wriggle violently to twist out of Red’s grip. The large demon held him fast, though the golden demon was a shuddering blur.

“My son, sink your vampiric teeth into the buttocks and take the power he would willingly give none. Do it!”

The demon spread the buttocks of the small demon. The vampire satyr did what came natural and sank the two throbbing razors into the fat gold flesh. His teeth instantly popped the skin and he felt the power flow down his throat into his rotting belly as he drank the golden blood.

When he finished and the gold demon had been released to run back into the stone jungle, the vampire satyr rose with the new dripping canines. “What was that all about?”

“Only a vampire satyr can take a demon’s blood. You start with the small and eventually take over a big one like the golden beast who regularly mounts me. It’s the only way to evolve here. My purpose here is to see to it that you never cease to evolve.”

The small doctor had been observing him closely for the past three days. Dr. Mountfountain would probably rise to consciousness today. He was alone with the nearly nude man, both in boxer shorts. Dr. Mountfountain was lying flat on his back on a metal table.

He ran a quivering palm over the hairy thigh of the physician. “I’ve always wanted you, Doctor. Always. Even when we were in college, I would have given anything, anything, if you had just noticed me. Just once, but no, not ugly little me. Old me. But now you belong to me. I’ve already had more sex with you than I ever could have fantasized. Of course, you have been unconscious the whole time, but I pretended your hairy body was responsive to mine. And I will do it to you again and again.”

He ran his sweaty palm up the thigh to the impressive mound below his belly.

“Look, my son,” the demon sighed.

“What, my father?” the vampire satyr shrieked.

“Look at this puddle and tell me what you see.”

Red forced the head of the son into a position where he could see the black, liquid hole.

“I see a thousand pointless deaths: I see a child mindlessly murdering an old woman; I see the most shredded suicides… ”

“You see,” hissed the demon, “what tangible sadness looks like.”

“Are all the maddening injustices of mankind against mankind recorded here?”

“All save one,” grinned the father, red tears hissing down his cheeks.

“Which is that?”

“Yours. The cruelest stroke is that you made all this up. The reality of this consists in your continued belief in its reality! You even created the reality that says all reality is a dream of yours. What arrogance! What presumption! You are a deceiver! The Truth — even though it cannot be known or believed here — is that you and I are eternally dreaming in a pit, snuggling together and shivering from the horrors of it all. Which is real?”

“I suppose, my father, that you should torture me sexually for a thousand life cycles. Please do me this injustice.”

Red hiked himself up into his son’s sweating thighs and forced his great member inside.

The son wept red tears through sightless eyes.

And this horror was only on the first few rungs in an infinite ladder of The Dark.

“Have you never wondered, never thought to ask to approach these walls, never wondered what they were made of, or what was behind them?” the demon asked after many lifetimes.

The vampiric satyr ran a hand over a wall. “It feels familiar.”

“It should; the walls are made of bricks of clotted blood. Ever thought to put your ear against one and listen?”

The son did so, and he instantly felt something push outward, like an elbow, and heard countless, muffled screams. The son gasped.

“Yessss,” the father smiled. “The walls are prisons, too. There are many millions trapped within. Manymillions. Screaming, unable to breathe, unable to escape. No wasted space in Infernus, whatsoever.”

“Father, I can almostsee this one who sits, mindless, near the surface of the blood wall. His legs, I think, are drawn up to his chest as he’s frozen in the bricks. He seems to be holding a thick cable in his teeth that sends great bolts of lightning into his brain. It’s what gives off a light that surrounds him. He jitters like a marionette. His hair, what little there is, is standing up on end. Why does he continue to hold it in his teeth?”