Everand Logo

Welcome to Everand!

  • Discover millions of ebooks, audiobooks, and so much more with a free trial

    Only $11.99/month after trial. Cancel anytime.

    The Hellelujah Trail
    The Hellelujah Trail
    The Hellelujah Trail
    Ebook133 pages1 hour

    The Hellelujah Trail

    By Phillip T Stephens

    ()

    Read preview

    About this ebook

    When the Lord Almighty demands that Lucifer return Pilgrim, a clueless optimist sent to hell by accident, Lucifer devises a scheme to lock his soul away forever. His plan? An anti-faith theme park called Hellelujahland with life threatening roller coasters and soul-sucking water rides.

    Lucifer assigns Pilgrim the task of building the park, believing his complicity will stain his soul. Happily for Lucifer, Pilgrim spreads comfort and joy wherever he goes, and happiness means only bad news in hell. Author Phillip T. Stephens adds this short story, The Hellelujah Trail, to celebrate the paperback release of the parent novel Raising Hell and introduce readers to the Smashwords editions of Rai sing Hell and it's partner novella, The Worst Noel.

    LanguageEnglish
    PublisherPhillip T Stephens
    Release dateSep 18, 2015
    The Hellelujah Trail
    Author

    Phillip T Stephens

    During my freshman year in high school, the principal called me into his office and said, "I hear you're hanging out with left-leaning radicals looking to undermine my authority and the authority of the teachers and the school." Now anyone who knew me, also knew I was the Baptist preacher's kid and I may have been a smart-ass but this was San Marcos, Texas in 1968. Shit kicker country. A town where we woke up to the sound of roosters and aroma of the stockyards. I wouldn't know a leftist from a hash pipe. I said, "Not really, but if you'll point me to them, I'll be glad to join." Principals have no since of humor and so he took me at my word. He failed to point me toward any leftist companions, but he did assume I wished their association. Nor would I dissuade him of his delusion, for I discovered in that moment the safety of hiding behind false assumptions rather than emerging into the light. You see, my parents, staunch fundamentalists (my father a Baptist minister and my mother a Presbyterian who married a Baptist minister) believed aliens were the devil's deception, like fossils and evolution. What a wonderfully cruel joke the aliens played on them when they left me on their doorstep on Christmas Eve. Alien babies can't be distinguished from humans. My parents had difficulties adjusting to alien adolescence, but they preferred it to demon possession. Nonetheless, the many hours I spent writing human dialogue in an attempt to master human role playing evolved into fiction and made me the writer I am today. I'm still an embarrassment to my parents, but an adopted alien fiction writer is no less an embarrassment than any other fiction writer who can't get a real job. (Phillip and his wife Carol rescue and foster Alien-Siamese hybrids in Austin, Texas hoping to rehome them, implant free, before the invasion. You can find many warm loving hybrids, indistinguishable from earhling kitties at austinsiameserescue.org.)

    Read more from Phillip T Stephens

    Related to The Hellelujah Trail

    Related ebooks

    Humor & Satire For You

    View More
    View More

    Related podcast episodes

    Related articles

    • Article

      Remastering The Mythos: Questions For Ruthanna Emrys

      May 4, 2017

      When Ruthanna Emrys first read H.P. Lovecraft's classic tale "The Shadow Over Innsmouth," her sympathies were squarely with the monsters — and that sympathy was the seed of her new book, Winter Tide.

      5 min read

    • Article

      Letters

      Oct 8, 2020

      Thank you for making my life more joyful month after month. I can’t tell you how important to me the Fortean Times is. Kevin Hope By email Regarding Matt Salusbury’s Forum article on sunken bells [FT396:54-55], there is more to the bells of Aberdyfi

      14 min read

    • Article

      Our Sister Killjoy

      Nov 6, 2023

      Our Sister Killjoy
      4 min read

    • Article

      Assemblage

      Mar 27, 2018

      TO MAKE HISTORY, gather together a poet and his lover and her stepsister, another poet and his doctor. Send them to the mountains in summertime but have the weather betray them, turn cold and wet, keep them inside near a roaring fire. Provide a book

      5 min read

    • Article

      Second Life For Coffee Grounds

      Mar 1, 2023

      Second Life For Coffee Grounds
      11 min read

    • Article

      Two Poems

      Jul 1, 2022

      After centuries of deferralto the white sky cloud cover God, who kept me on orange alert,babbling for mercies that were batted away sloppilylike dustballs in the wake of a sock, I turned to the Divine Creatrix,who built the short night, I was convinc

      2 min read

    • Article

      In The Middle Of Even This: Poetry

      Jan 1, 2020

      To be brought from the bright schoolyard into the house:to stand by her bed like an animal stunned in the pen:against the grid of the quilt, her hand seemsstitched to the cuff of its sleeve—although he wantsmost urgently the hand to stroke his head,a

      7 min read

    • Article

      Fredericksburg’s Wounded Warriors

      Jul 11, 2023

      Fredericksburg’s Wounded Warriors
      6 min read

    • Article

      A Year in Reading: Il’ja Rákoš

      Dec 14, 2019

      I, like you, definitely don’t need to be made more susceptible to the predations of the truly sinister agents of corruption that are at work all around us. The post A Year in Reading: Il’ja Rákoš appeared first on The Millions.

      5 min read

    • Article

      The Books Briefing: The Best Books to Get Lost in This Summer

      Jul 9, 2021

      Memoirs and novels that satisfy the urge for high drama: Your weekly guide to the best in books

      3 min read

    • Article

      The Book of Loki

      Mar 12, 2018

      The Book of Loki
      20 min read

    • Article

      The Trouble Gene

      Jul 1, 2020

      One clear thing about trouble—it can set you back to zero, a personal cone of silence. And reading, writing, listening allow entry into that troubled solitude; you disappear into it regardless t of the time or place you really are in, be it bed, kitc

      12 min read

    Related categories

    Reviews for The Hellelujah Trail

    0 ratings

    0 ratings0 reviews

    What did you think?

    Tap to rate

    Review must be at least 10 words

      Book preview

      The Hellelujah Trail - Phillip T Stephens

      The Hellelujah Trail

      Table of Contents

      The Hellelujah Trail

      Raising Hell Sample Chapter

      Map of HallelujahLand

      Click on image to enlarge

      The Hellelujah Trail

      Lucifer hurled into his sink for the third time that morning.1

      He blamed Hemingway. The braggart bastard regaled him with stories of leading CIA troops into the Bay of Pigs, then challenged Lucifer to round after round of absinthe and mescal. Just before Lucifer’s head hit the table, the bragging bearded bastard rose from his chair and lead the bar in a rousing round of The Internationale.

      In that instant he sent Hemingway to the Hell of the Old Man and the Sea Where the Fish You Catch Drag You to the Bottom to Tug You Across Razor Sharp Shells That Flay Your Skin in Strips, Then Deliver You to Hungry Orca Whales Already in a Frenzy Over Their Maltreatment by Abusive Theme Parks That Claim to Display Them for Educational Purposes While Really Exploiting Them for Profit, Who Chew You to Bits and Spit You Back Into Your Boat Where You Encounter the Same Fish You Catch Who Drag You Once Again....

      Cursing Hemingway’s memory, but delighting in his punishment, Lucifer dropped his pajamas in a heap and kicked them into the far corner of his bathroom, making sure to rip some extra holes in the delicate fabric for his menial immigrant sweatshop laborers to mend.2

      He scrubbed his face with ingots and rinsed with lava. In the mirror he spotted Struggles, his Victorian era English valet, trying to escape attention in the far corner of the room. Struggles cowered in the shadows between the poison oak infested towel cabinet and the winter furnace that Lucifer kept at full blast even though hell never seemed to pass the end of August.

      Struggles, Lucifer yelled. Struggles, sporting a starched collar and severe black morning coat, stood to attention, a difficult position given his current rhinoceros form. I think I’ll go early twentieth Windsor today. Do you have my morning coat and spats?

      Lucifer delighted in expecting Struggles to be ready with his outfit before he even made up his mind. Another opportunity to punish the poor beast. Probably the reason he turned him into a rhinoceros.

      Struggles held out his forearm to show a flat stubby hoof, cloven into three unbending toes. I had some difficulty, your most ungracious, he said, through no fault of yours. In spite of the disclaimer, Lucifer felt Struggles did indeed blame him for the valet’s metamorphosis into a rhinoceros.

      Still, morning coats draped poorly across the basic rhinoceros frame. The shoulders threatened to unravel every thread, the pants twisted at the crotch and the seams split below the knees. What were you thinking, Struggles? he said. To provoke me into such a short-sighted reaction. Have you no sense of decorum?

      He changed Struggles into a one-legged war veteran. Now get my wardrobe before I change my mind. And who’s my first appointment?

      Lucifer reached for his blowtorch to take his morning shave. He switched it to high to clean away the rough scales after the rough night of heavy partying.

      The screams of the damned embedded into the walls of his bathroom slightly brightened his morning. Their cacophonous chorus of help me, stop the pain, have mercy, whip me more, never stop the pain (or whatever pleas of agony they hoped, quite without foundation, would bring an end to battering, flaying and scorching of their buttocks, feet and genitals which protruded from the other side of the wall) provided a cheerful accent to the colorless tones of his decor.

      Struggles hesitated. In fact, he looked like he would melt into a pile of leptons and quarks which would then smash each other faster than Higgs Boson particles fired from the next generation accelerator after Lucerne.

      Wouldn’t you rather take breakfast, or at least a mild cup of sulfuric acid tea and let me reschedule for another century?

      I could turn you into a Supreme Court Justice at tea party rally in Arkansas right after they granted same sex marriage.

      You requested an appointment with Pilgrim, your most reprobate.

      Lucifer dropped the blowtorch. It caught his six thousand thread count Egyptian cotton face towels on fire, and then his liquid nitrogen after-shave. Within a few seconds his bathroom counter exploded into a mass of blue flame, not to mention his arms and torso. Without thinking he invoked the name of the All Lord It Over You and His Busy Body Son, which pissed him off even more than the pain.

      He extended a nail from his index finger and sliced his body from forehead to toe, peeling of three layers of skin. He threw them into his shower, still in flames, crackling and popping and casting off sparks like twigs in a campfire.

      Pilgrim, that no good do-gooder who took every evil deed assigned him and twisted it into a cardinal virtue. That pernicious pain in the ass from the All Make You Miserable, who blew up Lucifer’s plans to unleash a War on Christmas and spread it like a virus, instead inspiring a multimillion dollar foundation and an all faith museum.

      When Lucifer condemned Pilgrim to Hell’s Soup Kitchen, rendering him into a tasteless dish to feed the never satisfied souls that shuffled through its doors like zombies, not only did Pilgrim create new recipes to make himself more delicious, he improved the entire operation and became the most popular dish and Employee of the Month at the same time.

      When Lucifer shipped him off to become fertilizer for agribusiness—which included passing through equine, bovine and swine intestines—he convinced them to raise the livestock organically. Not only did he improve the quality of his fecal content, he improved their overall production. They switched from genetically modified produce to a green-based market and won awards from liberal and pro-Labor governments across the Eurozone.

      When Lucifer condemned him to the New Word Inquisition as a subject to test for new torture techniques, he thought he dealt Pilgrim the fatal blow. Fray Vicente de Santa Maria not only relished persecuting Jews and natives, he plotted and schemed his ascension to Grand Inquisitor. But heretic Pilgrim showed them dozens of helpful suggestions to ensure pain and compliance. Some of the friars loved his suggestions; not so much with the others. The Inquisition did its share of burnings and torture, but they succeeded far better at squabbling and infighting, missing hundreds of opportunities for rape, impaling, dismemberment and reduction to ashes.

      Those days were over.

      Lucifer had plans for mister know-it-all fat happy face. Big plans. But he needed to render them fool proof. Lock Pilgrim down so tight he couldn’t wriggle free if he were a nanotube in graphene. Force Pilgrim to deliver exactly what Lucifer ordered to tooth and nail and coccyx.

      A dancing, hairless, scaleless, skinny, bright green gecko stared at Lucifer from the mirror. What had once been magnificent ram’s horns lay scorched to cinders in his shower. His multi-colored scales scuttled on the shower floor sorting through the ashes. His skin continued to snap, crackle and pop like ad-enhanced sound effects in a cheesy cereal commercial.

      He kicked his towel cabinet, catching the base with a thick, gnarled claw. He yanked back, unable to disengage and, consequently, pulled the entire unit tumbling on top of him. Only in that moment did he remember telling Struggles to add a new line of dermestid beetle bath towels, which fell from the cabinet and descended on his open flesh, gnawing with the frenzy of locusts.

      Lucifer leaped across the room, batting at the beetles and screaming so loudly even the agonized souls embedded in his walls couldn’t help but laugh which was, in fact, their last laugh for a long time. And, it goes without saying, a long long time lasts forever in eternity.

      Lucifer

      Enjoying the preview?
      Page 1 of 1