The night was dark, no moon, low clouds obscured the stars and veiled the streets in a dense fog. Inside the grand stone courthouse at 95 Washington, the janitor put away his mop bucket, flipped the lever off for the lights in the main hall, commencing his check of windows and doors before calling it a night. The cavernous lobby echoed his footsteps, an eerie light glowed in the high chandeliers, a vapor cloud spilled through the partially opened windows, covering the marble floor in a turbulent sea of white, a muffled, yet repeated thud is heard in the direction of the far stairway. The shadows gave way to an immense figure crossing the lobby floor. Large muscular legs, huge arms, broad chest, massive shoulders, such an oversized head. Not a man, but a creature, horns extending from the upper skull, a tail protruding from behind, carrying a large staff in one hand and what appeared to be a shoe in the other, dragging something with it.
‘Can I help you?’ asked the janitor, noting that the large monster detected his presence. ‘Well, yes’, came a reply in a courteous voice. ‘I have soiled your clean staircase, with blood from the head of this unrepentant sinner, the upstairs hallway is a mess as well, not to mention the splatter in the office.’ The janitor looked behind the monster and noted the blood trail extending down the stairs across the floor to the forehead of a bald man in a black robe whose leg was in the firm grip of the creature. ‘Oh, blood! said the janitor, ‘that is bio hazard stuff, I am not authorized to clean that up, sorry, union rules. But may I ask who you are and what you are doing with Judge Solomon?’ ‘I am Lucifer, Lord of Hell, I am here with my demon assistants to deliver eternal punishments, as ordered by the Boss, against those who have harmed his children.’ ‘Wow, that is a lot of work, this is Connecticut, after all’ remarked the janitor. ‘I know’ said Lucifer, ‘we have been doing double shifts, the Boss is on a rip, he wants these evil doers in black robes rounded up to start their eternal sentences.’
‘What is your name and what do you do here?’ ‘I am Marty, I am the janitor who cleans up for the judges.’ ‘Nice to meet you Marty,’ says Lucifer. ‘What does Judge Solomon get?’ asked Marty. ‘Oh, he gets shot in the forehead with .308 ball ammunition from a disgruntled litigant sniper from 800yds, thru two panes of glass, then boiled in excrement for eternity, that is what the big bubbling vat sitting on the coal fire in the far left courtroom is for, my demons Dante and Joost have been working on the setup all day.’ ‘A .308 ball at that range is impossible!’ exclaimed Marty. ‘Yeah that’s what I said, but the Boss quoted Judge Gold’s ruling that it can be made, I am stuck with it, so we gave the shooter a thirty round clip.’ sighed Lucifer. ‘So Judge Solomon will spend eternity boiling in excrement with a hole in his head?’ asks Marty. ‘Yep, eternal headache while boiling in shit, the Boss got the idea from the Talmud’ remarked Lucifer, as he flung open the doors to the first courtroom, skewering a moaning Solomon with his pitchfork, tossing him across the gallery directly into the large vat boiling before the bench, a splash, a hiss, and screams. ‘Your Boss reads the Talmud?’ asked Marty. ‘Well, it is not his favorite book, but since he got wifi, he surfs the heavenly net on his tablet, skimming the news feed, but I sense there was something special about boiling shit for this guy,’ quipped Lucifer.
‘May I ask why his dick and balls are in his mouth?’ inquired Marty. ‘Oh, just my personal touch, those are Steve Dembo’s private parts, it annoys Kundry, when I do that to her pals.’
A dull roar was heard from the next courtroom, Lucifer beckoned Marty to follow, the double doors cast open, the roar of a CBI ChipMax Industrial Wood Chipper filled the chamber. Crafty demon Richard stood smiling, holding a rather unattractive, dykish looking human in a black robe. ‘Remember, the spec sheet calls for feet first’ instructed Lucifer. Marty looked at Lucifer in disbelief, ‘really?’ he asked. Lucifer explained that the Boss had a sense of humour when it came to certain punishments. In this case, a cord of judges are punished by being eternally run thru a wood chipper, feet first. In the pile behind Bozzuto, lay Cutsumpas, Ficeto, Resha, Coleman, Adelman, Diana, Murphy, Gould, Suarez, Bright, Prestley, Wetstone, Munro. Lucifer explained that the judges are fed into the chipper feet first, then sprayed into the jury box, powers of darkness and a bit of time dilation repeats the process, chopped up for eternity. ‘Boss ordered this one with a chuckle, saying it was a Connecticut Special, but I did not get the joke behind it’ said Lucifer. ‘Long story’ replied Marty, who followed Lucifer to the lobby. The smoke had cleared from the marble floor. Lucifer smiled and explained that some of his more technically oriented demons had combined time and space dilation to fulfill the Boss’s next order. ‘What is this?’ exclaimed Marty. ‘This is the eternal punishment for all lawyers who are GALs, the ones who take money for trafficking the Boss’s children. The entire layout is a miniature Connecticut, where the GALs drive from one courthouse to another in their BMWs, then, a nor’easter snowstorm, buries the place, where they get hit by huge snowplows, demonically driven in the oncoming direction. The cars are smashed, thrown off the road, end up in the ditch, buried in snow, with every bone broken, decapitated, the GALs bleed out then die with excruciating immunity. Then things warm up, the snow melts, and the punishment repeats, for eternity. Glad there was a list of GALs qualified for punishment, a lot of work went into rounding them up’ chuckled Lucifer, as he took a seat on the wooden bench, pulled out a cigar, bit the end off, the tip instantly burning in a fiery glow.
Beelzebub appeared with a clipboard of completed work orders for sign-off. Lucifer went through the papers with an eye for detail. ‘Why has fentanyl been substituted for oxy in the eternal overdose of Judge Annie Dranginis’ he asked. Beelzebub stated that the overdose punishment needed an eternal supply of oxy which Purdue Pharmaceuticals could not guarantee, but a Chinese supplier met the contract requirements with fentanyl, at a lower price. ‘Fine’ scoffed Lucifer, ‘budget is everything, but why the price increase on the Judge Pinkus punishment?’ Beelzebub quickly explained that the bridge and the river came in on budget but a change order came down to add piranhas to the water. ‘Eternally tossed off a bridge and chewed up by piranhas, oh we are going to hear it from St. Francis, feeding paedo sinners to his fish, at least the meat is kosher,’ smirked Lucifer.
Demon Erlik appeared with another clipboard and a roll of drawings. ‘My Dark Lord’ he began. ‘Just the facts,’ replied Lucifer. ‘It is the Judge Heller work order, took six changes and a schedule extension, but the eternal garage is complete,’ Erlik reported, as Lucifer examined the paperwork. ‘What was so hard about this, Heller drives a black Yukon into a three car garage, gets violently stabbed to death by a strange little man, bleeds all over the floor, gets stripped naked, dismembered, pieces stuffed in a suitcase, then hauled off by a member in good standing of the Bar Association? Erlik shuffled his feet, explaining that the DMV was a hold up on registering the Yukon for eternity, but the procurement delay was in getting the Range Rover delivered the right color. ‘Details are everything’ responded Lucifer, letting out a long puff from his cigar.
Demon Ifrit approaches with an urgent change request. ‘My Prince, I have an urgent request signed by five guardian angels with cost approval, to pull Attorney Meehan from snowplows to a dungeon room, like the one in Pulp Fiction, spec’d for going medieval with pliers and a blowtorch, ball gags and eternal anal pounding’. ‘Oh fine, as long as it is funded, let Bruce Willis’ character act out with the samurai sword in this one’, he replies, ‘but nix the anal stuff, the angels don’t realize Meehan likes that.’ Demon Moloch approaches with a grim face. ‘We have more specials, but they are classics and the set ups are easy’. Lucifer looks over the list. Reuben Midler, Sidney Horwitz, Bruce Freedman, fed to hogs. Judge Jane Emons and Joette Katz eternal burning at the stake. Rosa Rebimbas, John Kissel, William Tong, endless, headless river raft float. ‘So be it, classics are easy’ signing off the paperwork. ‘But substitute Judge Patrick Carroll for Katz on the stake, he can burn with his beloved sister, put Katz in the broken toy diorama, the one from Sid’s room in Toy Story, she has some hang up with broken toys, she can suffer with them for eternity, make sure Sid’s dog gets to tear her to pieces, then the broken toys can figure out how to reassemble her in various ways, Scud is such a good boi.’
‘OK, I have to run,’ announces Lucifer, ‘there are more ‘family court’ players down on Long Island, the technical team has a special garage with a hellish refrigeration system, where a bunch of judges, lawyers, psychologists, social workers and the like will spend eternity going to sleep in a garage, wake up frozen solid, stumble around the house, painfully thawing, then dropping dead, repeats forever. Family law has caused hell to freeze!! Boss wants to make sure it really hurts, he was not happy when little Tommy showed up.’
