It was a calm, peaceful night in the streets of London. The bats were chirping, cars were rolling around all over the place like they do… thousands of cars. Maybe millions. And not a single one of them touched each other as they rolled - a miracle, considering that at least ten of their drivers would have blown a world record on the breathalyzer had they been stopped.

However, one woman in the city was having a decidedly less-than-peaceful night. Her name was Laurie (not that it matters), and she was currently fleeing for her life through the labyrinthine back-alleys of the Rotheringtonham subdistrict.

The rhythmic pounding of her feet resounded from the grey tombstone buildings that crowded around her, tauntingly reflecting her desperation, yet offering no escape.

On a positive note, her running form was immaculate. She had been a distance runner in high school, so her strides were long, smooth, and efficient.

Had her pursuer been anyone other than Tenek, The Ripper, she might have gotten away.

Panting, almost at the limits of her strength, Laurie turned a corner, only to be met with the cold reality of a fence blocking the alley. A pair of pitbulls growled at her from the shadows on the other side, pacing like vultures, grinning, as her fate closed in behind her.

Laurie sobbed, realizing that this was the end. She fell to her knees, then her hands, whimpering miserably in what would have been a wail, or even a scream, if only she’d had the necessary lungful of air. Her gaze rested on the orange fluorescent street-light in front of her like a dying man taking one last look at the sun.

Until that final spark of hope was blotted out by the shape of her pursuer.

Tenek mannerfully grabbed her by the lapel, forcing her face closer to him.

“Methinks thou dost protest too much.” quaffed the stranger. The waxen scent of peach-colored crayons tickled her nasal fillibriae as he spoke.

“P-please mister, don’t hurt me. I have a baby girl at home who will be very sad if something happens to her mommy.”

“Wherever did’st thou get that impression? Malarkey!” scorned Tenek. He threw his head back and cackled maniacally at the moon - three short bursts of laughter, cut abruptly short by dead silence as he turned back to the woman, thrusting his head closer to her face.

“Hast thou ever been on a plane?”

“Y-es, I… huh?”

“Marvelous! And such places where’st manyfolk board such aeronotic vehicles… thou hast seen these as well?”

“What do you want from me!?” the woman screamed, bursting into tears.

“Hearken! I have happened upon such a place myself!” Tenek exclaimed, his eyes as wide as saucers.

“And Lo, did I behold! A most unusual sight! A vulture… attempting to board the plane!”

Sensing a confusing lack of hostility, Laurie chanced a look at the man’s face… and almost fainted at the obvious signs of insanity plastered across his visage - his forehead might as well have had ‘DAMAGED’ written on it.

“T’was encumbered by two plump raccoons, recently deceased, to enjoy as in-flight refreshments! But Yea - they would’st not let him aboard, for thou art allowed… but one carrion per passenger!” The man’s eyes bugged with hilarity as he smiled and exhaled violently in a failed attempt to laugh.

Yet, as with all of his actions, the failure of the laugh had been calculated. By going through the motions of laughter, Tenek hoped to seed a laugh in his captive audience, similar to how yawns can be transmitted through social contagion. But by doing so silently, he retained the ability to hear Laurie’s precise reaction, and respond accordingly.

How will’st thou respond, fair lady? Thou are clearly enamored avec moi, to what lengths will’st thou go to conceal thine affliction?

Play your cards!

Finally, oxygen returned to Laurie’s starved lungs, and she immediately put it to good use.

“AAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEE!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!” she shrieked, cowering into a ball, shaking back and forth violently. This was the shriek of death, of an animal that had accepted its fate and decided to expend its remaining energy in one final act of defiance against the cold, uncaring universe.

Finally her voice gave out. She clutched her sides as a fit of coughing overcame her, mucus pouring from her nose as a balm for her shredded vocal cords, her face twitching spastically.

Tenek was overjoyed.

Though I did’st’nt attain e’en a perfunctory laugh… Observe dem cheeks dance! Jiggling! Clapping! A veritable standing ovation!

Rejoice!

Tenek had done it. Conquered the unconquerable. Mated the round peg with the square orefice. Only one thing to do now - build on this positive momentum, and seal the deal.

Tenek hesitated, ready with the one pick-up line he could remember.

It’s not perfect… but I can work with this!

Laurie once again raised her head to look at Tenek, abject horror in her eyes.

Do it, you coward!

Tenek opened his mouth… hesitated once more…

…

!

“Fuck Me Or I’ll Kill Myself.”

----------------------------------------

“You said that!?” asked Tantalus, taken aback.

“It would seem so…” Tenek muttered in reply. The captain was back in Tartarus, crouching beside the pool of faux-wine. Day shift was long over, so Lathra had already departed, and the screams of the damned had quieted down to the occasional whimper. Except for that one freak who liked to torture himself for fun. Apparently he’d gruesomely murdered a prime imperator’s daughter just to be made immortal and sent here. Tenek winced whenever he looked into that particular inmate’s cell to try and decipher the equations written on the walls in rectal blood.

The narrative has been stolen; if detected on Amazon, report the infringement.

“You’re lucky you can warp, otherwise the Earth police would have locked you up for that. And, by the way, if a woman is running away from you, screaming for her life, that’s a sign she doesn’t want to hear a pickup line. Why were you even chasing her in the first place?”

Tenek’s shoulders slumped. “I’ve told you this. When I venture off the ship, I have to devote the vast majority of my mental space to remembering which portals will appear where, and for how long. It takes so much of my concentration, that I can only access a sliver of my neurocortex, and a small bit of my brainstem. Hence the animalistic behavior.”

“Okay, but what would happen if you decided to forget about the portals for one mission?”

“You know I can’t do that.”

“If you don’t assume a greater risk of mortality, you’ll never get anywhere with archaewomen.” Tenek asserted.

“I might have to do that…” Tenek admitted, looking forlorn. “I feel awful about what happened. It was probably one of the worst nights of that woman’s life.”

“What happened after that?”

“Nothing. Some guy popped up out of nowhere and told me politely to step away from her. My nerves were on a hair trigger, so I just ran away and jumped back to the ship.”

Tantalus didn’t say anything to that, he just bobbed up and down awkwardly in the pool until Tenek continued.

“Is there nothing else you could teach me?” Tenek pleaded, but Tantalus shook his head.

“I enjoy the free food, but there’s no way to sugarcoat it: You’re just going to have to turn up your intelligence dial for this to work.”

The one thing I can’t do… Tenek thought hopelessly.

“Perhaps there’s another archaehuman in Tartarus who could help me?” Tenek asked. He already knew the answer, and he knew that Tantalus knew as well. This was just a basic loyalty test.

“I heard that Zyzzyphus was also an archaehuman…” said Tantalus after pondering for a moment. “But I don’t see the guy too often. He’s really devoted to his punishment, you see.”

Tenek nodded, satisfied. He believed that Tantalus’s advice had been given in good faith, but just in case…

After all, this is a man serving multiple life sentences. Some of what he says is bound to be a lie.

After a ten minute stroll through the rows of cages, pits, and miscellaneous whizzing contraptions, Tenek came upon the mountain: wide at the base, yet growing steeper near the peak. It was the lone (and therefore the tallest) mountain in Tartarus, though only the fifth tallest peak aboard The Inferno. One of them was a snowcapped tourist destination for higher-ranking staff, another was a volcano for sacrificing virgins. Prudishness will not be tolerated aboard the spacecraft - if a superior officer gives you a command, you follow it, rookie.

The largest mountain, regrettably, was made entirely of excrement - formed by a single leak in a major sewage junction that had gone uninspected for a thousand years. It too was a tourist destination - inmates wishing for a change of scenery can temporarily opt into a worse form of punishment to escape the tedium of prison life. Apparently the view from the peak is worth the catastrophic damage to one’s gut microbiome when one is used as a pair of skis during the descent. Legend has it that the idiot who missed all those inspections was buried alive in the center of the mountain. With his arms and legs bound, his only hope for escape was to eat the material in front of him and transfer it behind him through a means of propulsion known as the digestive system.

At six inches per year, he should be getting out soon… mused the captain.

Assuming he took a straight path.

And that he didn’t die within minutes.

About halfway up the mountain, a lone figure strained against a mighty foe: a round boulder weighing at least a thousand pounds. Drenched in sweat, the man dug his heels into the rocky ground, quivering with exertion, only to lose his footing, allowing the boulder to roll all the way back down the mountain to the base. The man dropped where he stood, sprawled out across the ground. He was a mighty archaehuman - tall and bulky, with an exceptionally low bodyfat percentage. Dickskin shredded, as the kids were saying. He was only wearing short workout pants, so the entire laceration tapestry was on full display. Thick black spiky hair emanated from his skull, highlighting his piercing golden eyes.

A cursive tattoo on his chest read “veni, vidi, veni” - I came, I saw, I came.

This man was Zyzzyphus - slayer of pussy. Conqueror of virgins. Unfortunately for him, a couple of those virgins had been birthed by some ludicrously powerful men, so he’d been sent to the innermost circle of hell on some trumped-up charges of attempted tenth-degree murder (murdering a man and everyone within ten degrees of separation from him on Likebook). “Because if he killed everybody - nobody would be around to stop him.” reasoned the judge before throwing the book at him.

The captain walked up and stood over him, waiting for the man to seduce the very air back into his lungs. Eventually the bitch complied, and he stood to greet his captor.

“Tenek! What brings ye ‘round these parts?” bawded the muclebound warrior in a strangely twisted dialect known as ‘strayan.

“Prisoner six one seven oh nine.” the captain nodded stiffly. “I was just inspecting the nature of your punishment. Seems your mountain will suffice for now. To be reinspected again in three millenia.”

“Two and a half.” said Zyzzyphus, holding up a couple of fingers to emphasize. “My newest progressive overloading regimen has been kicking it in the fakkin’ tail. I do eight sets of eight boulder rolls and call it a day, then do five sets of five the next day, but I go a bit higher up the mountain, and cap it off with three sets of three on the third day as hard as I can go - then I rest on the fourth day and repeat. My delts are peeling off the bone.”

To a normal person, being forced to roll a boulder up a hill for all eternity, only to have it roll back down the hill on every attempt, would be a nightmarish torment. What the designer had failed to take into account was that Zyzzyphus was a gym bro - for him, this grueling exercise was an opportunity to do what he’d always wanted in life - train hard, and find his true limits - no matter how long it took.

His original baker’s dozen of life sentences had elapsed in the previous universal era.

Like Tantalus, Tenek didn’t have the authority to remove him from his cell. The idea that a single prisoner might not want to leave their place of eternal damnation hadn’t occurred to the demon who wrote the contracts - let alone two.

“I can see that.” said Tenek, unable to contain his ‘mirin. “You must have been quite the ladies’ man back on Earth.”

“You know where I’m from? Cheeky blighter.”

“I’ve taken an interest in your people. Archaehumans - the oldest known race of bipedal hominids. No tails, no horns, no psychic abilities… The universal government still designates the planet a sort of nature preserve - nobody’s allowed to visit or contact them. Most sentient life evolved from this small group of pink monkeys, so we let them live their lives in peace… as peaceful as they can manage, at least.”

Zyzzyphus winced. He knew.

“I’ll cut to the chase.” Tenek lowered his voice. “Your women have proven notoriously difficult to communicate with.”

“Right crocodiles they are.” Zyzzyphus agreed. “Yet I keep fallin’ for ‘em.”

“And they keep falling for you. Which is why I’d like your assistance in the matter.”

“Ye have a particular bird in mind?”

“No, any girl will do.” said Tenek.

“Good, that’s the problem with most guys. They fixate on one girl that they can’t get because they’re afraid to go after a girl who might say yes.”

“I’ve pursued females of all shapes, sizes, and subspecies. Their only commonality was the ‘No’ that finalized our interactions.” Tenek stilted.

Zyzzyphus pondered for a moment, thinking back through the eons to the last girl who might have said no to him. His eyes lit up.

“Oh yeah… ‘no’... that did happen to me one time.” A million dollar smile cracked across his face.

“Mate, when a girl says ‘no’ she’s just testing you, to see if you care deeply enough about her to push through the resistance and get ‘er real feelings to come up.”

Tenek brought out his notepad again. King Midas from ten cells over couldn’t spit this much gold if he tried.

Zyzzyphus raised a hand to the simulated sky as he reached his philosophical apex:

“A ‘no’ is just a ‘yes’ that needs persuading.”

Is that right? Tenek thought as he turned from the greek god of gainz and began to walk back to his captain’s quarters.

Something about that doesn’t seem quite…

But I guess…

There’s only one way to be sure.