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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

His mother Agrippina was the sister of another, even nastier little bastard you may have heard of—Caligula. He married one of his other sisters, but he humped them all. Still, despite all the creepy stuff with her brother, after Caligula was stabbed to death by his own guards Agrippina was rehabilitated and eventually married Caligula’s successor, old Emperor Claudius. Somehow she even managed to convince Claudius to put aside his own beloved son and instead make Nero, her son by a previous marriage, his heir. Once Nero was the emperor-designate, she bumped off poor Claudius by feeding him poisoned mushrooms.

Clearly grateful for his mother’s assistance in becoming the most powerful man in the world, Nero promptly turned around and ordered her killed. He first tried to do it with a trick boat that was supposed to break apart so she’d drown, but Agrippina was a tough old bitch and made it back to land, so Nero sent some of his guardsmen over to her house to stab her to death with swords.

Family values, Roman Empire style.

Nero did a lot of other pretty terrible stuff during the rest of his reign, including burning a buttload of innocent Christians, but that isn’t the reason he got his own little highway project in Hell, the bridge I stood in front of now. See, what Nero didn’t realize is that his mother’s coup in getting Claudius to marry her and raise Nero above his own son was the result of a little bargain she’d made with one of Hell’s more influential inhabitants, a powerful demon by the name of Ignoculi. Now, Ignoculi and his infernal pals didn’t give a (literal) damn about Nero killing his mother—in fact, they rather admired it. But they did expect him to live up to the terms of the bargain his mother had made to put Nero on the throne of the Roman Empire, because Hell had big plans for Rome. But Nero refused to play along. To be honest, he probably didn’t realize how big an operation Hell really was—the Romans had a different religious picture of things, Pluto and the Elysian Fields and all that stuff. It was probably a bit like that movie producer in the Godfather who thought he could tell Don Corleone to fuck off, then woke up to find a horse’s head added to the bedroom decor.

Pissing off Hell is not a good idea. Things went downhill rapidly for young Nero, and within a short period of time he found himself off the throne and on the run. He eventually wound up committing suicide. However, the real surprises were still waiting for him.