by Thomas Mann
p.379
“A Valentine. . . Oh, you shouldn’t have!” exclaimed Cleopatra as Memnock handed her the very fresh human heart. “Where ever did you find one on such short notice, my sweet?”
“Um. . . in a store. . . well. . . in a guy in a store, you know behind his rib cage. . . Look, I don’t even think he was using it,” mumbled Memnock.
p.921
They won’t let you into Heaven if you’ve had your appendix removed. Funny, it turns out you need it up there.
p.308
The cloaked skeleton looked down at his plate. Spicy bat wings, grilled rat spines, and a glass of expired squirrel milk. The Grim Reaper looked up at Steve and rolled his eyes.
“Um, I don’t think this food agrees with my dietary lifestyle choice. Could you maybe cook me something else… Maybe, a tofu dish with a fruit side salad? It’s up to you since this is your house and all--” complained the Reaper
“Ugh,
ok…” moaned Steve. Not only is Death a bitch, he is also a Vegan.
p.2403
They’d done it again and God was getting pretty fed up. He would be forced to postpone Doomsday yet again and all because the Four Horsemen of the Apocalypse had once again locked themselves out of the their stable.
God lowered
his head and sighed. Was Armageddon becoming more trouble than it was worth?
p.2340
Steve knew it didn’t matter what he said, the Grim Reaper would always feel ashamed of his rural agrarian roots.
p.2222
“How was meeting God?” asked the Devil
“Oh
God, he’s great. A real class act, nice, funny, and strong. I saw him
lift a whole horse right there on the spot, don’t ask why he needed to,
but he did it and it was cool. He’s the kinda guy you could really support,
you know? I’d vote for him. But you know what surprised me most. . . Best
Breath Ever! Even after eating onions and a horse!” gushed Steve.
p.2119
“So, Mr. ‘I am better than everyone else in Hell’ how was your visit to Heaven?” mocked Memnock.
“Lay off, dude,” whined Steve.
“I bet it was perfect, freakin’ angels freakin’ flying’ all over the freakin’ place and whatnot…” Memnock moaned.
“Ok, it was pretty great, but I wish they’d warned me or at the very least offered me some gum.”
“What?” Memnock asked.
“The
ascent…Look, I couldn’t pop my ears the entire way up. The pressure
just kept building; depressurizing was out of the question. The whole vacation
it really really hurt, I mean talk about a sinus headache! Kinda hard to take
in the beauty of the pearly gates when it feels like someone is inflating a
baloon inside your skull… Oh and yawning, that didn’t help a bit.
Even now,” Steve moved his jaw back and forth, “ my ears are still
popping.”
p.1289
“Control tower, this is Runway Six, it looks like we got ourselves a helava problem with that Antarctic Air flight,” crackled the voice over the radio.
“Dammit! When are they gonna learn?” cursed the grizzled air traffic controller. “Penguins! Who let them up there in the first place?” he pounded his fist on the desk.
It was a common misconception that penguins were a flightless bird. The truth of the matter was quite the opposite; penguins could fly with the best of them. The trouble lie in the fact that they couldn’t land.
“Sir, I think someone is going to have to talk him down,” hissed the radio. The air traffic controller pressed the respond button on the radio.
“For the love of god, I would Jim, but I don’t speak Penguin! I don’t think I’m going to be able to save it. Sad, but they’re going to lose another ‘747,” the controlled sighed.
“But sir, think of the ice shipment! If that plane goes down it’s taking this year’s ice supply with it!” popped the radio.
A tear ran down the controller’s face.
“Nothing I can do, son. It’s out of my hands now. Looks like another year of warm sodas and hot beer… god if only there was an easier way to get ice. . .”
p.819
“Oh yeah, well I had a fish once too! A beta fish named Ricardo Hamtasic!” exclaimed Steve.
“Ha ha! Your fish is dead… like you! So, how’d he end up in Hell?” asked Memnock
“When I changed his water the temperature was too cold. So, I thought he was dead. Then resurrected him, so I thought I was god. Then he died, so I thought about dinner.”
“You win some, you lose some.”
“Ain’t that the truth,” replied Steve.
p.1673
In Heaven, a man can only be distracted by a woman’s virtue.
In Hell, Steve often found himself distracted by a woman’s forked tongue, baldhead, and flaming cleavage.
p.61
Steve
told him that picking a kitten is a lot like picking a melon. You want to squeeze
its head and thump it a few time to be sure it's ripe. . . but not too hard
because if you break it you have to buy it. . .
p.7
"Look,
you've got to understand that I am a dog person. And it's not that I don't like
cats, it's just that I don't trust them. . . Basically means I won't be lending
them any money," Steve told Judy.
p.1227
“Vera, do you know how I much I hate this Secret Santa crap?” The Devil asked his secretary.
She nodded and returned to her typing.
“I mean what am I supposed to get Barry in accounting? Barry of all people, I hate that guy,” he continued. Vera looked up from her typewriter.
“You could get him a toaster. . . or you could replace the fingers you bit off last Christmas?” The secretary replied.
“Oh bah humbug! That’s no good; he’d only waste the fingers. But that gives me an idea. I could not bite off anymore digits this year, and that’d be my gift,” The Devil smiled.
“I don’t think not doing something counts as a gift, Your Evilness.”
“Oh I dunno, we’ll ask Barry what he thinks.” The Devil retorted. The Prince of Evil then dialed the Accounts Dept. and asked for Barry.
“Oh, hello Barry, this is the Devil. Quick question; for Christmas would you rather have a toaster or the rest of your hand?” After brief pause the phone was slammed down!
“Ha! Barry would disagree with you, Vera! The non-gift counts as a gift, so looks like I win again!”
p1225
In Hell gift are exchanged during the holiday season, but of course Steve wasn't surprised to find a catch. For, unlike on Earth, when a gift is given in Hell it must then be smash over ones head.
Steve gave a sigh of relief when he opened his present, to find Memnock had given him a pillow.
Then he screamed in pain as he hit with the pillow recalling only half a second prior that pillows in Hell are, of course made out of cinder blocks.
p.619
“And that’s how I lost m’ leg,” explained the grizzled old man.
“Wow, lost it in a stampede, I guess cattle wrangling can be pretty dangerous stuff, huh?” Steve asked.
“Hell boy, who said anything ‘bout cattle. I ran a hermit crab ranch, supplied them mall kiosk and tha like. And let me tell you, they’re a perilous bunch of bastards. Hell son, ain’t nothing scarier than a herd of hermit crabs moving at full charge. Last place you’d wanna be trapped. They don’t mess around, you know? A mess of them clawed crustaceans get hold of you, yer done for. They can skeletonize a whole man in. . . well. . . six to eight weeks.”
Steve can only blink in horror.
“Beware the mighty hermit crab!”
p.902
It was only in Hell, and only when all hope was lost, that Robert Frost could admit his dark secret. It was a truth that he’d hidden deep all his life and in a single liberating moment he let it all out.
“My favorite style of poetry is, and always shall be. . . the dirty limerick, and I don’t care who knows it! I swear my best work was never published, but if you ever dared to venture into a New England truck stop rest room during the 1950s you know my genius! And I say to you all, lift a glass and toast that man from Nantucket. . .”
“Frost you suck!” shouted Memnock as he chucked an empty beer can in the poet’s direction.
p.188
Steve looked up at the neon sign. It read simply -
"Welcome to HELL: The Land the Fire Dept. Forgot"
And within seconds the bright sign caught ablaze.
p.3361
Steve was knocked unconscious by the hell beast’s blow, but Memnock had come too far to turn back now. He braced himself for a fight.
Then it charged at Memnock. Faster and faster, closer and closer, building speed up until it was at full waddle. Then. . .
BAM! Memnock kicked the feared villainous hell Duck of the Netherworld in the neck and sent all 20lbs of demonic waterfowl into the Lake of Fire.
As it hit the lava it let out a “Quack!” whose message could not be misunderstood. A quack that said simply said this is a duck with a taste for revenge. . .
p.777
In Hell there are no banks, everything is very, very expensive and the only form of legal tender is the penny. Consequently, this conjured up a whole new manner of monetary woes for Steve. Case in point. . .
Prior to his death, when Steve went to the supermarket he couldn’t afford the fancy TV Dinners with promises on the box like “Made with Real Cheese,” or “Now 98% Edible!”
Oh no. . . in Hell, thanks to the penny, Steve's problems had changed. For example, when he went shop at the Faustian Food Center he had to take a wallet so big that when he put it in reverse it would go BEEP-BEEP-BEEP.
Last Updated 4/19/2004
Email: Thomas Mann
Copyright. Thomas Mann 2004