The Dinner Guest- Chapter 17: The Saga of Shriss Babler, Part the Second

Havockon began with a whimper, a steady screeching thump as the igneatic mechanism descended deep into the glacial depths. A brilliant blue hue of frozen mass flickered around me, dazzling me into a stupor, infecting my senses with beauty before the harrowing ritual ahead of me. No luster, no shimmering splendor, no infestation of natural glory and icy wonder could dissipate the precipitous and imminent sojourn condensing before me.

From my superior knowledge of everything and the stupefying breadth of my studies, I had encountered tales of Havockon from past warriors, many of them (obviously) far beneath my vast limits of saturated glory and awesometude. While it appeared to be a common trope of the literary kind, a mere wander through the underworld to achieve enlightenment in a metaphorical trek from stunted adolescence to cynical maturity, this excursion was most definitely harder than it appeared.


Karl broke my thoughts with an insidious question. “Yeah, it is pretty trite to have to go through Hell to achieve immortality or enlightenment or whatever. This is a pretty lame trope.”

I stared at him intently. “Seriously, dude, can I finish my fucking story? If you think Hell is so hard to go through, you do it yourself. Jesus Christ Karl, shut the fuck up and let me tell me story. You’re being a bitch, ok?”

Anyway, my magmatic elevator completed its plunge with a muffled thump. I was in a bare room hewn out of stone. A lonely door stood forlorn at the far wall, a simple portal fabricated from cheap wood and a brass handle. I entered the door without pity, the boards creaking softly as I ventured through it, bellowing from a lost opportunity of a new friend. I had no time to reflect upon its wary condition, my task at hand too important to entertain a gate who was down on its luck. This was Havockon, not a pity party.

Through the wooden loser-door I entered a lavish banquet hall, splendid in the trimmings of sumptuous frivolity. Half naked jaguar women danced a liquid rumba on plush velvet carpeting, dozens of them bumping chests and slapping backs to the rhythms of a thirteen piece jug band and hollowed turtle shells, a furious beat and syncopated palpitations from the physical realm of Nature. On the outskirts of the dance floor, robot maidens performed a noxious jig in place, feet welded to the ground while their torsos and upper appendages vibrated wildly like spasmatic octopi and anemic willows flapping in a fall afternoon gale. There were tables near the walls of the hall with a few straggling dancers sitting in broken chairs and fanning themselves with clamshells.

This is Hell? I thought to myself, intrigued at the party unfolding before my eyes. This isn’t nearly as bad as I expected. Maybe this is hell to the more wussified warriors that come through here, like Odysseus or Pee Wee Herman, but definitely not enough for me.

And then I heard the voice.

“Oh my god, I’m sooooo drunk.” An alto shriek pierced the music, thrashing the rhythms of the band with a sledgehammer of vocal fortitude. I turned my attention to an elevated stage at the far end of the hall. Seated on two elaborate thrones were the two lords of the Underworld, the king and queen of Hell: Persephone and Hades. Laying on the ground next to them was that three headed dog-beast, Cerberus, its heads laying in a tower of skulls in blissful slumber, rising and falling in unison as they slept gracefully through the ruckus.

“So I was all like, ‘Who does that?’” came the shriek again. The voices’ source was none other than Persephone, beautiful Queen to the darkly sinister Hades. She guzzled a clear liquor out of a large bronzed head, the face resembling Richard Nixon. The liquid poured into her mouth and down her face, the streams soaking into her curls and the wedding dress she wore. When finished with the drink, she dropped her cup, Nixon’s face grimacing as it hit the ground, and Persephone expelled a mighty burp from her mouth. She smirked and turned to Hades, exclaiming, “I missed you Hades.” Hades smiled, obviously drunk, his hands retracted near his neck, head bobbing to the music, a goofy grin plastered on his face. He turned to his half-bride, freshly returned to him for the fallow winter months, and said, “I missed Per-sephone,” in a sing song bass, drawing her name out into a lyrical iamb.

They continued their lubby-dubby exchanges, each remarking the importance of their respective love to their own life, with many pronouncements of missed partners and “Oh my Gods.” It was a sweet tete a tete of romantic niceties and drunken avowals of love. It was achingly genuine and certainly unexpected of the classical lord of darkness and his beseeded lady friend. I smiled and laughed at the thought of such shadowy figures professing the truths of the greatest emotion given to mankind. Of course, I was full of the greatest quantities of love imaginable, but they gave each other an admirable amount.

Slowly I inched forward to the stage, avoiding the dancers and robots who thrusted and jiggied in haphazard fashion. I was tempted to show off my own unique dance stylings to these creatures, seeing as I had a dance named after me (the Babler) which would have been the hit of the twenty first century had it not been for 9/11. But these poor beings of Hell were not worthy of such a new craze, just like those jackasses at TRL who decided to stop playing my music video because the country was “in mourning.” Stupid jackasses.

I brushed along the dance floor, sidling up to the stage. Before I could reach it, a hand tugged at my shirt. I turned. It was Orpheus. Tears streamed down his face, and he gazed up at me with sad eyes. He was obviously thinking about his lost love Eurydice, stuck in the other parts of Hades while he became known as the greatest minstrel the world has ever known. He peered at me with the desperation only unfulfilled love could allow. The music still burned in his eyes.

I shrugged him off, pulling my arm away. I spat in his face. “Stop crying, pussy.” How could that little bitch get his music played and I couldn’t?

“Wait, you spit on a mythical person whose name is synonymous with heartbreak? What type of asshole person are you?? Implored Karl, his face aghast in contempt.

“Karl, this is the second time you interrupted me. And now you’re judging me. You wanted to hear my fucking tale, so let me tell it, ok? One more time, and I’m going to stop. You understand?”

He remained silent, and I continued.

Persephone noticed my actions toward Orpheus, spitting out her drink in a spray of vodka, exclaiming, “Oh my God, who does that? I mean really.” Hades turned his attention from his beautiful mate towards me, pointing at me with a bony finger. “Come up here young Viking. We’ve been expecting you.” He laughed heartily at this statement, his body shaking, forcing his whiskey to spill over his black robes. I climbed onto the stage, crossing the platform. Cerberus’ triple heads snarled at me as I walked by, their jowls nipping at my ankles. This sent Persephone into hysterics, the queen falling out of her chair as I jumped away from the dog’s attacks. “Oh Hades, I want a dog for our away home in San Antonio. We need a vacation dog at the ranch. They crack me up sooo much.” Hades remained silent, his body shaking in similar hilarity.

I quickened my step, sidling up to the thrones until I was just out of the range of the damned dog’s leash. With a sigh of relief, I turned to Hell’s royalty, saluting with an elaborate gesture, utilizing each limb (and other appendages), impressing the crowd with my skill and body control. After a half hour, Hades motioned for me to stop, and I halted my salutation, climbing down from my height, my body stopped as I balanced my weight on my enormous, tree trunk erection, twirling in circles, only halfway through the official PSHAW salute.

Hades was visibly peeved and peered down at me from his perched throne. “So you’re the son of Odin, here to journey through Havockon.” I nodded, beginning my salute again. He motioned for me to stop, continuing. “I spoke with you father earlier. You may pass through my domain on your gay little ‘spirit journey’ or ‘warrior quest’ or whatever brand of homoeroticism Odin wanted you to go on. Boy, it’s pretty typical of your father. You know he’s bisexual, don’t you?” My mouth formed an instant objection, the words stammering in my throat before Hades cut me off. “Thor used to give him the ol’ Hammer of the Gods, if you know what I mean.” I told him I didn’t. “Oh come on, he made his warriors cross a rainbow bridge into Valhalla. Doesn’t that tell you something? Are you that dimwitted.” I begin shaking with rage, my fists balled up, ready to strike.

“I don’t know how you came about, Shriss. He either got too drunk and started fucking whatever hole was presented to him, or your mother was a part of his college ‘experimentation and finding himself.’ Either way, you’re the bastard son of a buttfucker who owes me two hundred bucks. I’ll let you go through Havockon if you pay the dividend right now. Otherwise, you’ll never grow up to be the oiled up man-wrestler your father wants you to be. Like father like son, I guess. Anyway, do you have the money?”

I was visibly shaking at this point, infuriated at the insults to my familial heritage. I picked up the nearest object to me, the drinking head of Richard Nixon, and threw it with all my force at this bastard’s queen. It pegged her on the shoulder, causing her to drop her glass, spilling pink mojito on her fresh wedding dress. The banquet hall stopped, the music halted and the dancers stood silently in place, the throng gazing open-mouthed at the affront to their illustrious queen leader.

“Oh crap,” I uttered, turning around and beginning to run.

Hades stood, his presence filling the vast hall. Persephone sobbed next to him, tears of vodka and lager streaming down her face. I froze, unable to escape from the debacle they forced me into. Hades glared at me, pointing his finger at me.

“Shriss, halt. You have insulted my woman and my kingdom because I spoke the truth about your whore of a father. I cannot let this action go unpunished. And I will let the woman you insulted do the punishing.”

Persephone sniffed loudly, wiping her nose with the hem of her dress. The tears had stopped at this point. She looked at me with sullen, red eyes. “Oh my god, who does that? I mean, really. You threw a cup at me. And it hurt! I demand an apology.”

“I will not apologize to you. You insulted my family and I retaliated. I am not sorry and will do it again.” I planted my feet, crossed my arms, glowering with my fiercest grimace.

The unholy queen smiled, sniffling again, and belched, aiming the foul gas expulsion towards my face. “I have the perfect punishment for you. If you want a life-changing journey through the underworld, I’ll give you one. I’ll curse you with the ability to travel through space and time. Haha! Take that.”

Hades turned to her, shaking his head in frustration. “Honey, dear, I think you’re drunk. Give him a worse punishment.”

She blushed and nodded in agreement. “Oh, sorry. Well, I’ll raise the odds then. Not only will you be cursed with the power to travel through time and space, but I’ll also change you into the culmination of your family heritage. You will be…a woman! Havockon!”

She tapped my head with her delicate finger. A surge raced through my body. I blacked out.

When I awoke, I was back at the glacier, naked and female. The bears were dead and my father was gone. I was naked (and smoking hot), but cold.

“Whoa, so that’s how you got your smoking hot body,” Karl said with a grin.

“You’re lucky that was the end of my story. Now you know how I came to this point. If you’ll excuse me, I have to go to sleep. We’re doing a production of Cinderella tomorrow, and the stripping is extremely intricate. I play the magic pumpkin, and I roll around in pumpkin seeds. Those things are hell to get out of my vagina. Good night Karl. Your journey begins tomorrow.”