Lawyers in Hell Read Online Free PDF Page A

flotsam and jetsam bobbled on an ancient tide:  Erra was in town.  Or so Draco had told Lysicles.
    Flanked by counsel on either side (with Alexander, Lawrence, and Aristotle bringing up the rear), Lysicles splashed through streets awash in brine until they reached the slippery stairs of the Hall of Injustice.  Here and there, Hellions with rubber rafts and leaky dinghies floated, hawking their services.  But few rode the rafts and boats:  a plague was abroad, and no one in New Hell wanted to be close to anyone else.  On stoops and from second-story windows, vendors offered prophylactic amulets of the god Anu and lesser charms guaranteed to keep the boils away.
    Someone had written with paint or blood on the marble pediment of the Hall:  “He who steals my words steals my soul.”  And someone else had crossed it out and scrawled:  “We, the resentful, do the minimum for the incapable.  We have done so little with so much for so long, we can now do nothing with everything.”  And a third scribe had scribbled under that:  “The truth shall get you torment.”
    Lysicles took one greaved step after another, looking neither left nor right, climbing up the slick stairs toward his judgment.  His senses were sharp:  he could hear his five companions breathing; he could smell the garbage floating in the brine.  Now, finally, confrontation with his accusers was upon him.  He felt joy.
    Battle is battle, and a battle about to be joined always calms him.  No more interminable delays.  No more unanswerable questions.  He was and is a man of action.  Today he would act:  his gut thrilled with anticipation.  In hell where food has no taste and drink no intoxication, where all is hopeless, he tastes hope.  A second chance for glory might lie behind those tall bronze doors.
    At the top of the stairs, they are stopped by two scaly green fiends, to whom Hammurabi announces:  “We are on the docket.”
    The doors open, creaking and scraping across the muddy marble.
    Then they are inside, in the dimness of futures unformed and chances to be taken.  Almost, Lysicles thinks he sees the three Fates, Atropos and her sisters, unsnarling his life.  But it is just a wall carving of the Fates.  Beyond them, on the opposite wall, the dreadful Erinyes, personifications of the anger of the dead, are carved:  dwelling here beneath the earth to punish those who swear false oaths, waiting for a taste of irredeemable flesh.  Will they step out of the wall, shed their marble skins and flap overhead among the damned?  Bite throats?  Tear out hearts?  They might:  it’s hell.
    It is so quiet here, footsteps are too loud.  They walk and walk in silence, turn and turn and turn again amid labyrinthine corridors, looking for their appointed judgment hall.
    When they find it, there are hundreds waiting, and these are all murmuring at once.  Row after row of benches against the walls have signs above them:  gluttony; sloth; murder; theft; rape; betrayal … and on and on.  The gluttons overflow their benches, their vast envelopes of flesh bulging, eating ceaselessly from stained sacks, complaining about the tasteless food.  The slothful stink, sitting on the wet floor atop stains and mud and their own feces, tangled and disheveled.  The smell is so bad even the murderers put their bloody hands over their noses and turn away.  The thieves are nearly buried in their treasures, guarding all with promissory stares, hands too full to fend off one another:  they curse and threaten anyone approaching.  The rapists are skeletons in coffle:  heavy chains keep their hands bound at their waists (below which no fleshy organs remain) and their feet together.  Near at hand, the shifty-eyed betrayers promise anything for a price, if only you will forsake all others and place your trust in them alone….
    Lysicles has seen it all before.  He remains unmoved.  With his champions beside him and his hangers-on behind, he leans against