Excerpt: Attrocious Eulogies

I have never liked the modest mausoleum of the family Abraxus. It is a stonish house, with its questionable gargoyles in a baroque palette of materials: granite, brass, limestone. The door is guarded by thorny shrubs and inadequate deities.
Thorns will not deter the devil from entering a mausoleum. The devil delights in bloodshed, even it be his own ichor. He will be scratched as he pass and be both delighted by the sight of his own blood, and spurred on to further and lower devilry.
Deities will not block the path of the devil. Gods look down on mortals and say: Well they deserve to be led astray; the devil is there to test them. Those who are led deserve not to sit with us, deities, who are immortal. Test not passed.
Spurred by thorns and ignored by deities, the devil arrives at the Abraxus mausoleum at midnight, which is his time. He tells the lock to open; it does. He beckons out the Abraxus dead with music blown on his pipes and fancy steps of his hoofed feet. The backward bending knees of the devil make him a master of the fancy dance. His hoofs beat a rhythm on the patio, tip tap tip.
The dead may have been virtuous in life but after dying they are compelled to wickedness by the sheer monotony of death. After a year of lying still, a person gobbles any opportunity for action, no matter if the action is raw or rotten.
So the Abraxus of an high and an old standing press open the lids of their sarcophagi. So the Abraxus of middle standing claw their way through the shallow skin of earth and floor tiles. So the Abraxus of little note force through the sealed jars that contain their ashes. All seek to join the devil's entertainment out of ennui. But the ashen cannot join, not as they are.
The ashes must become flesh. The devil has flesh, so he says, flesh that they can wear for the time of the entertainment. The ashen dead, ranked small by their own family, are flattered and accept. They put on the flesh that the devil provides. Here is their first evil. The devil has no flesh of his own. The flesh they wear has first to be stripped from the bodies of the innocent. It kills the innocent, of course.
Then all can caper and dance. The devil's hoofs beat on the paving, clip clop clip. He suck in the night and blows it out through his pipe.
“Louder pipe,” cry the dead. “Louder beats too.”
The devil plays and hoofs louder. He sucks in the moon now, and he stamps, bang bang bang.
“More pipe,” the dead demand. “Beats louder again and faster too.”
“Nay, this is a loud enough pipe,” says the devil. “Nix on louder beats, and nix on faster beats.”
“We demand,” shriek the dead. “Entertainment was your beckoning and entertained we insist on being.”
“Very well,” says the devil.
He sucks in the stars at last, and smashes his hoofs, crish crash crish. The paving splinters, cracks and then parts. The parting is a slit, then a gap, then a chasm. And at the floor of the chasm, Hell.
God appears.
“Devil,” He says. “Where are my stars? My moon? Where is night?”
“The dead demanded entertainment,” says the devil. “I consumed them in my pipe to fuel my muse and my music.”
“They must be returned to the sky,” says God.
“Then the souls of those who demanded their consumption?” says the devil. “Forfeit?”
“Aye forfeit,” says God. “Forfeit forever.”
So the devil breaks his pipe and the stars, moon and night return to the sky. So the devil walks backwards and back the way he came. Past the aloof deities, past the spurring thorns. So the chasm closes on the dead, holding them forever still, forever in Hell.
That is why thorns and deities are a poor choice of garden design for a mausoleum.