The War in Heaven by Kenneth Zeigler Page B

rapidly. It was a winged demon cloaked in black with a human in tow at the end of a long chain that coursed with bright blue electricity. He emerged from the ring and landed on his feet quite gracefully. With his bat-like wings folded up behind him, he took several steps forward.
    The human’s landing was far less gentle. He exploded from the ring and reaching the end of the chain around his neck, came crashing down, slamming face first onto the cavern floor. With his hands shackled behind his back his hard landing was virtually preordained. Dressed only in a gray soiled loincloth, blood dripping from his broken nose, he looked up into the face of the master of the dark realm. This man who appeared to be in his mid-twenties had a dark beard and seemed to be of Middle Eastern descent.
    “Now look what you’ve done,” scolded Satan. “You’ve dripped your filthy blood all over my nice clean floor. What am I to do with you humans?”
    “I don’t belong here,” he said, his tone breathless. “I am a humble servant of Allah. I don’t serve you.”
    “Oh, I see,” said Satan, turning about for a moment, before turning to face the man once more. “You don’t? I disagree. That bomb you strapped about you before you walked into that Baghdad marketplace killed twenty-two people. You sent eighteen of them straight to me. You have served me well, Ali.”
    “They were most assuredly all Shiites,” retorted Ali. “They deserved to be sent here. They have distorted the words of the prophet, peace be unto him. I was acting in the name of God.”
    “Were you now?” responded Satan in a taunting voice. “God told you to slaughter a group of market goers? You humans never cease to amuse me.”
    “I was acting as the hand of God…I don’t belong here,” insisted the man, who once more tried to rise, though a boot to the center of his back sent him again to the floor. “There has been a mistake; I belong in Heaven. I have earned, with my own blood, the pleasures it offers. I will lie with the boys of eternal freshness and with the virgins. They promised it to me. I died in jihad. I was guaranteed to go to Heaven. You can’t stop me.”
    This time Satan laughed. “I can’t stop you? I think I already have. You will be pleased to learn that I have already sentenced several of your victimsto dreadful ordeals within my realm. Very soon you shall join them. Oh, but your eternal punishment should be far worse. The question is, what shall it be?” Satan played with his goatee for a moment, apparently in thought. “Oh yes, of course, I have just the thing. Menlek, hog-tie this infidel, I’m sending him to the Caverns of Torment.”
    “Yes, my Lord, it is my pleasure,” said the demon at the human’s side.
    A pair of barbed shackles was placed around Ali’s ankles. The chain between them was looped around the one joining his wrist shackles, drawing him back into a most unnatural position. The task accomplished, the shackles around his ankles snapped shut as if magnetized, and once closed, burst into a red heat, welding themselves around his ankles permanently. Ali howled in pain as smoke laden with the smell of burning hair and broiling flesh emanated from beneath his shackles.
    “Like your unsuspecting victims, you shall be rendered helpless, unable to defend yourself against those who shall become your eternal tormentors,” announced Satan, waving a hand at the great metal ring behind Ali. The scene changed from that of a stormy ethereal realm to a vast dimly lit cavern in the depths of Hell.
    Two demons roughly grabbed Ali by the arms and dragged him to the very threshold of the great ring. They forced him to gaze into the image before him.
    At first, Ali could make out nothing, yet his eyes were adapting to the darkness. There was something strange about this place. The walls and floor seemed to be moving, undulating, ever so slowly. And there was something else, the horrified cries and screams of a great