Drummer Boy - Back Into Hell Ch. 02

She wiped the blade off on her hot pants, and then, at last exhausted, faltered, sending her sword clanging to the stone floor, and promptly collapsed.

She didn't make it all the way down, though. Thumper, seemingly roused from his bout of insanity, leapt up to catch her in his arms.

"Easy there, Skye," Thumper said. "It's okay. I got ya."

"Unhand me, beast!" Granny said. She made a show of struggling against Thumper, but it was pretty obvious, to Jason at least, that she was right where she wanted to be.

"Take it easy," Thumper said. "You just beat off a whole lot of bad guys."

"Release me!" Granny said, "Else I shall be forced to beat you off as well!"

Thumper smirked. "I'm up for it if you are."

"Salacious brute!" Granny said. She raised her arm as if to strike Thumper in the face, but he easily caught her wrist.

"Hey, I'm on your side, huh?" Thumper said.

Granny wriggled against Thumper a bit more, grimacing with the effort. Thumper was having some trouble holding her back, even in her weakened state, but he eventually proved the stronger. Somehow they twisted their bodies around so that they were facing each other. They glared challenge into each other's eyes. And then Granny dove her mouth onto his and kissed him.

Thumper grabbed Granny by her big round ass and pulled her into him. Granny broke free of Thumper's hold on her wrist, and she grabbed Thumper's face, kissing him all the harder. They were both getting really handsy.

Jason stood there, like the big dumb third wheel that he was. He supposed that, in a situation like this, the protocol was to make himself scarce, but he was on unfamiliar ground here. It wasn't like he could just bounce; go out to a movie or visit some friends while these two got their freak on.

"Oh, but you may," came Granny's voice in his head. "You are quite safe. The Aerie has been cleansed of enemies."

Jason was surprised at her thinking at him, but only a little. He'd grown accustomed to the demons' mind-talking, although he was a bit taken aback by her doing it while simultaneously making out with Thumper.

"So," Jason answered mentally, "are you really as beat up as all that?"

"Not as severely as I portray," Granny answered. "However, I am in need of some recuperation."

"That's what you're calling it, huh?" Jason sent, making sure to put a touch of sarcasm into his thoughts. "'Recuperation'?"

"Certainly. And nothing more," Granny sent, not at all convincingly. "Merely a means to ensure that my beast produces the desired amount of the soul essence I require. I manipulate my beast, just as Purleen manipulates you."

"Oh, that's how it is?" Jason sent, "Aren't you a little old for this 'I'm rubber and you're glue' shit?"

"I grow weary of your intimations," Granny sent. "Begone, human."

"I would," Jason sent, "but where do you expect me to go? It's not like I know my way around here."

"This is true," Granny sent. "Even absent the presence of hostile enemies, the Aerie has many features that could prove perilous to a mere human. I suggest waiting in the armory behind you."

Jason looked as Granny suggested, and saw a steel-banded wooden door set into the wall. While not as big as the giant door that served as the entrance, it was still pretty giant, enough to give even the tallest Wing he's seen a foot or two of clearance. He was surprised he'd not noticed it before, but reasoned that he'd probably had other things on his mind.

"Armory?" Jason sent. "Isn't that a place where you store weapons and stuff?"

"Aye," Granny sent.

"So it's like a closet?"

"Aye," Granny sent.

"You want to stuff me in a closet," Jason sent.

"The alternative," Granny sent, "would be to stay and join us. I'm sure we could make accommodations..."

"Oh no...no thank you," Jason sent. "This one's all you."

"Then leave me to my beast," Granny sent. "And please take my blade with you. I would rather avoid any ... mishaps."

Jason shook his head. He picked up Granny's sword by the hilt, and, dragging the heavy weapon behind him with a hideous amount of loud scraping, he aimed for the door.

"Come on, you," Jason muttered to the sword. "Visit lovely Tarterus. Come for the epic battles, stay for the fucking closets!"

* * *

"I mean, Jesus..." Jason said to Leanne. "'Fuck-Bringer'? It's not exactly 'Lord of the Rings', is it?"

Leanne smiled. "Tellya what, if Aragorn had his druthers, he'd'a kicked wimpy-ass 'Narsil' to the curb to get with Garanetta's gnarly pig sticker."

"Point taken," Jason said. "Anyway, it was right around then that I starting noticing that Granny was kinda ... slipping."

"Hmm," Leanne said with a grimace. "Yeah. Arnie noticed it too. Said when she started at the Sugar Shack she was would up tight as a drum. Started to loosen up real quick, though."

"What does that mean?" Jason said.

"Y'know, getting into her role," Leanne said. "More swagger, flirty with the patrons, a little more grind in her bump and grind, if you know what I mean. Less 'Grand Wing Mother', more 'Skye Rose'."

"How'd you even know she was gonna end up here, anyway?" Jason said. "It's not like coming to Earth was on her to-do list."

"We didn't," she said. "But we got eyes all over the place. Anytime one of our gals makes it over, we know."

"What, you and Arnie?" Jason said. "Are you like the demon police or something?"

"Oh, not Arnie," Leanne said. "Although he does play his part. Naw, I'm talkin' about the other gals like me. The ones who've been here a while, and know how to play it. We're all over the world, and we keep in touch, so's to keep the really bad shit from happening."

"So you were keeping tabs on us all week," Jason said, "and it wasn't until last night that it qualified as an emergency?"

"Hey, most o' the time it's a one-way trip," Leanne said. "Even the gals who get here by accident, once they get a taste of Earth life, they start to acclimate, and don't wanna go back. See, worlds are kinda like people. They have feel to 'em..."

"Yeah, a timbre," Jason said. "Worlds have a soul to 'em and they affect the folks who live on 'em. Granny already explained it to me."

"She did, did she?" Leanne said. "Well, bully for you. And here I am all outta gold stars."

"Sarcastic is a good look on you," Jason said. "Goes with your eyes."

"Shaddup," Leanne said. "Anyway, Garanetta seemed to be finding a good groove, Purleen had you to play with..."

"Hey!" Jason protested.

"What I mean is, she had her pet cambion at her beck and call..."

"Not really better," Jason said.

"...so we figured the soul of Earth was doing its thing, and that y'all were in it for the long haul," Leanne said. "Didn't count on either of 'em having such a hard-on to get back to Tarterus."

"Oh god," Jason said, "I'm thinking about Pearl with an actual hard-on, and now I'm terrified." He paused. "And also a little turned on." He paused again. "And there it is, right back at terrified."

"Take it up with your shrink," Leanne said. "Later. Right now I need you to lay on, Macduff."

"The next part's pretty embarrassing," Jason said.

"The whole thing's embarrassing," Leanne said. "But-"

"I had sex with a human," Jason said.

"From Tarterus?" Leanne said. Jason nodded.

"Eeeeeugh!" Leanne said. "Desperate much?"

"It wasn't as bad as all that," Jason said. "More surprising than anything..."

* * *

The door had a rectangular handle, purely functional, and made for hands slightly larger than his. He didn't think that he'd be able to even budge the giant door, at least not one-handed, but it swung open easily when he tugged on it.

When he popped his head inside it was dark at first, but then it lit up, courtesy of a bunch of sticks placed all over the room. They seemed to be made of wood, except for the tip, which held a crystal that emitted a cozy, amber glow. They were almost like big matches, except they didn't exactly burn.

Jason gave the place a look around. There were no other doors that he could see and, more importantly, no one else, demon or otherwise, hanging out inside.

"Good deal," Jason muttered, and dragged Fuck-Bringer in.

Once inside, Jason propped Granny's sword up against the closest wall. He pushed the door almost closed, but left it open a crack. He couldn't see any kind of locking mechanism on it, but didn't want to take the chance that there was some magic shit that did the same thing. Last thing he needed was to get trapped and forgotten in some demonic storage closet.

And that's certainly what this seemed to be. Except where a human closet would be stuffed with a bunch of ancient magazines and seldom-used appliances, this was a room full of battle-stuff. An armory.

The first thing he noticed, with some alarm, were the heads arranged along the walls. There were about thirty of them, up near the ceiling along the perimeter of the room, spaced a few feet from each other. Looking at them further, though, Jason realized that they weren't heads, but helmets, made of dark brown leather. Exhaling a relieved sigh, he continued his survey.

Below the helmets, attached to the walls, were about a dozen of the dresses he's seen Granny's gals wearing when they took off for parts unknown. Seeing them up close now, they appeared to be made not of leather or some other fabric, but of rigid, polished wood. They weren't ornate or even decorated. If anything, they reminded Jason of clothes for paper dolls; flat, full-body coverings that attached with leather straps in the back.

Which was doubly confusing. They didn't seem elegant enough to be considered formal wear. At the same time, there was no way that this could be armor. Fighting in one of these things would be nearly impossible, and any demon flexing the wrong way would surely break them. Further, he couldn't imagine what protection wood could afford them that their already tough skin couldn't handle. He made a mental note to ask Granny about it later.

Below that, sitting on the floor, were spears and chests. The spears, long wooden shafts with silvery rings at regular intervals and gray metal heads, were arrayed in racks, making them look like scary pools cues.

As for the chests, there was no mistaking them for anything else. They looked like the dictionary definition of "treasure chest" from the "Lil' Pirates Big Picture Book of Pirate Stuff". Dark brown wood, gray bands of reinforcing metal, rounded top, the whole nine.

One thing he didn't see was a chair. Which made sense, since this room didn't exactly seem like a chillout spot. So, not knowing how long Granny and Thumper would be at it, Jason sat down on one of the chests and waited.

And waited. From the other side of the door came increasingly louder sounds of fucking, along with the corresponding voices of Granny and Thumper, who were getting extremely vocal as they goaded each other on. They were getting pretty raunchy and disrespectful, even kinda racist.

"Hey, Jason!" Jason muttered. "Ever wondered what Kevin Hart and Judi Dench fucking Sarah Silverman and Benedict Cumberbatch sounds like? Well, wonder no more!"

Jason was suddenly reminded of a roommate he'd had, his first year out of college. He'd shared an apartment with a guy who, swear to god, was always having sex with his girlfriend. Like, all the time. And they were LOUD. You just couldn't get away from it. If they were in, and they were in a lot, they were fucking. He'd be trying to practice, or watch TV, or just eat, and they were always the loudest thing. It didn't even matter if Jason brought a girl of his own back, they were shameless as fuck. Nothing more uncomfortable than trying to have sex to the tune of someone else's fucking. Even the cuddling afterward got spoiled by the constant sounds of sex. Jason ended up moving out as soon as he could afford it.

Jason had no idea what happened to that pair, hell he couldn't even recall their names now, but the memory of that time lived on in his mind, and was now brought to the fore by having nothing to do except listen to Granny and Thumper hitting the skins, while he waited them out.

After about twenty minutes, though, Jason got bored. To kill some time, and take his mind off of what was going on next door, he decided to check out the contents of the chests, figuring there had to be something good in there.

After going through a few of them, though, disappointment set in. Turned out that these were basically where they stored their uniforms. He rummaged through stack after stack of leather vests and skirts. Every now and again he'd run across a stray iron dagger in its scabbard, which was also made of leather. That just made Jason wonder about Thumper's hypothesized hellcows, and how, like he'd advised Thumper, he'd really rather not think about it.

Jason had opened and rifled through seven of these chests, nevertheless wondering what sound hellcows made, and if they had more or less than four legs (he guessed they probably had either seven or nine, since a lot of legs would be creepy, and an uneven number would just be worse somehow) when, upon opening the eighth chest, he got a pleasant surprise. Sitting right on the very top was a t-shirt and a pair of jeans.

"Holy shit!" Jason said. "It's my shit!"

It was the stuff he'd been wearing when Pearl had spirited him away to Tarterus that first time. His long-forgotten garments were just sitting there like old friends who'd been waiting for him to drop by.

Jason abruptly realized that he'd been buck naked for probably a whole day now, ever since he and Pearl had come back into the apartment to spice up Telly and Lillian's love life. In light of that, he felt quite justified in snooping through Aerie property, and further, reclaiming what was rightfully his.

"Ha!" Jason exclaimed. "Get ready, Tarterus! This human's about to rock your world ... by wearing clothes! Silly or not, here I come!"

Jason immediately donned his t-shirt. He pulled his socks on, and set his shoes on the floor. He was practically beside himself with joy when he picked up his jeans to find that the pockets still had his things in them.

Jason was so happy to see something familiar in all this weirdness that he just sat down and took inventory. He pulled out his phone, his wallet, a pack of gum, a plastic comb, half a pack of Camels with a lighter tucked inside, a little multitool that he kept on him for just in case, a ballpoint pen, and a tube of Carmex.

He checked the phone first. It was dead of course, but he seriously doubted there was any cell service on Tarterus anyway. He considered having a smoke, but he wasn't particularly fond of smoking indoors, especially in someone else's house. Just rude. He was just about to pop in a stick of Wrigley's when he realized he wasn't alone.

A woman was standing next to the barracks door, bent over slightly, with her ear pressed to the wood.

And she certainly seemed to be a woman, with no demonic attributes in sight. She looked to be a few inches shorter than Jason was, with pale skin and a slim build. Short blonde hair done up in pin curls.

She wore a skin-tight silver bodysuit that covered her from neck to toe, making her look like what people in the 50's pictured when they imagined "the future". This outfit afforded Jason an unimpeded assessment of her backside: round, womanly hips and a perky little ass.

Jason had no idea when she'd shown up. He'd already been tuning Granny and Thumper out, and been so absorbed in re-discovering his stuff that he just hadn't noticed her entrance.

"Hello?" Jason said.

The woman didn't respond. Didn't even seem to notice that he'd spoken.

Jason tried again. "Hi," he said. "Hey, where'd you come from?"

Without so much as looking his way, the woman responded with an annoyed, "Shhh!" Then, again without looking, she made a frantic hand gesture, beckoning Jason to join her at the door.

Why the hell not? How dangerous could she be? Jason got to his feet, and went to stand next to her at the door.

There they were, face to face, listening to Granny and Thumper going at it. Now that Jason could see her face, he could tell that there was something ... off ... about her. She was cute, almost to an extreme. She had round, wide-set eyes, and long blonde lashes. Cute little button of a nose and high, sharp cheekbones. He mouth was very round, and very tiny. And she had the smoothest skin he'd ever seen, no blemishes or wrinkles whatsoever.

"They're really going at it in there," she said, in a voice that voice that, disturbingly, made him think of Shirley Temple.

"Well, you know how demons are," Jason said. "Or do you? Hey, look, my name's Jason. I gotta say, it's nice to meet another human being."

Only then did the woman flick her light brown eyes Jason's way, to examine his face. Then flicked immediately downward to check out the rest of him. Jason became acutely aware that he was still naked from the waist down.

The woman's eyes widened, and her face brightened with excitement. But not, as it turned out, for the reason Jason had expected.

"Is that gum?!" she said. Before Jason could respond, she grabbed the pack of gum out of his hand, knocking his other stuff to the floor in the process.

"Hey!" Jason protested. The woman didn't care.

She proceeded to open the pack, and in no time at all she'd stripped the wrapping off of four pieces and stuffed all of them into her little mouth. She chewed loudly on the gum, humming with pleasure as she did so.

"I haven't had gum in forever!" she said, around the huge wad in her mouth. Then she went back to listening at the door, smacking and chomping all the while.

Ooooo-kay. This must be one of the humans they kept around on Tarterus, the ones that they used for their magic and stuff. Both Pearl and Granny had displayed a pretty low opinion of these humans, considering them disgusting and dumb, little more than beasts.

This woman didn't seem disgusting at all. She could certainly walk into any bar on Earth and come out with a companion for the night if she wanted, even dressed in her silly bodysuit. On the other hand, she didn't seem to be quite all there, fascinated as she was by gum and the sounds of Granny and Thumper's fucking.

Granny had said they Aerie was empty, but now Jason suspected that she must have only been talking about Wings, as if humans just didn't rate. Was this human the only one left, or were there more of these space-cases wandering around, on the prowl for gum and voyeuristic pleasures?

A minute passed, and then Jason heard Granny say something about taking Thumper to "new heights of passion". There followed a gust of wind powerful enough to push the door inward an inch, and after that, nothing but the sound of slowly clinking chains from the other side.

"Aww, come on," the woman said. "Is that it?" Irritated, she peeked around the door, looking through the crack to see what was going on.

"I'm embarrassed to admit it," Jason said, "but I've been on that ride. I hope it turns out better for him than it did for me."

The woman stood fully upright. She was, he saw, almost a full foot shorter than he. And, there was no hiding it in the bodysuit, she was just about as flat-chested as they come. She wasn't wearing a bra, but if she had been, it might be a B-cup. If it was padded.

"I could go for some of that," the woman muttered.

Then she looked at Jason, eyeing him up and down while chomping on her gum.