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Back Happy Hour In Hell
Chapters (60)
  1. DAW Books Presents
  2. HAPPY HOURINHELL
  3. Copyright page
  4. Contents
  5. Dedication
  6. ACKNOWLEDGMENTS
  7. prologue
  8. one
  9. two
  10. three
  11. four
  12. five
  13. six
  14. interlude
  15. seven
  16. eight
  17. nine
  18. ten
  19. eleven
  20. twelve
  21. interlude
  22. thirteen
  23. fourteen
  24. interlude
  25. fifteen
  26. sixteen
  27. seventeen
  28. eighteen
  29. nineteen
  30. twenty
  31. twenty-one
  32. interlude
  33. twenty-two
  34. twenty-three
  35. twenty-four
  36. twenty-five
  37. twenty-six
  38. twenty-seven
  39. twenty-eight
  40. twenty-nine
  41. thirty
  42. thirty-one
  43. thirty-two
  44. thirty-three
  45. thirty-four
  46. thirty-five
  47. thirty-six
  48. thirty-seven
  49. thirty-eight
  50. thirty-nine
  51. forty
  52. forty-one
  53. forty-two
  54. forty-three
  55. forty-four
  56. forty-five
  57. forty-six
  58. forty-seven
  59. forty-eight
  60. epilogue

But the slave trader who bought him recognized Riprash’s quality, or at least his immense size, and put him to work as an overseer. Freedom is kind of a moot point in Hell, apparently, and Riprash was never granted his, but he worked his way up to positions of greater trust until he was the slave trader’s right-hand man. Centuries later, Gagsnatch took over the trader’s business (neither a gentle nor a legal transaction, from what I could tell) but he kept Riprash in the same position of trust, and my new chum had worked for Gagsnatch ever since. He gave me a startled look when I asked him how many years ago that had been.

“Years? Words like that don’t mean anything much here. Some of the new ones come in and they ask how long this, how long that, but the rest of us find it doesn’t do any good to think about it.”

It made me wonder how many years Gob had been a child, scuttling through the narrow alleyways of Abaddon. The kid had been born in Hell, but time here didn’t seem to mean much, and Gob didn’t remember much beyond a few days back, probably because, until he hooked up with me, it had all been pretty much the same.

I was beginning to see that the whole Hell thing, including the timelessness, had been craftily arranged to make the inmates as unhappy as possible. They had to scramble for food and shelter every day, but other than that, things hardly ever changed—or changed just enough to make the repeated doses of punishment more painful. If things are always the same, you get used to them. If they change, if sometimes they get a little better, that makes the return to misery all the more painful. So if any of you plan to open your own Hell, remember this time-tested recipe: Vary the suffering so your victims don’t get completely numb. Show them something better from time to time, just to keep them hoping.

I couldn’t help wondering whether Riprash’s fellowship, the Lifters, might actually be part of the infernal master plan. After all, what better way to insure suffering than to wave a little hope for better days in front of the damned and the doomed? Riprash didn’t believe that, though, and I certainly wasn’t going to argue. I had come to trust him, and he even seemed to like Gob, in a how-demons-do-it sort of way. Since Gob was always as hungry as a feral cat, he gave the boy little handouts of food and was amused by the kid’s elaborate caution whenever we left the confines of the tiny cabin. “Don’t you know you’re on my ship, little bug?” Riprash would bellow. “Nobody even pisses on The Nagging Bitch without my say-so!”