Vanni Fucci Is Alive and Well and Living in
                      Hell
                                by Dan Simmons
Introduction
In America as we enter the "discount decade" of the Twentieth Century
($19.90-$19.95, etc.), one is so used to thinking that progress equals improvement
that it is almost heresy to be confronted with the absolute refutation of that premise.
For instance, take current theology. Please.
One can view Dante Alighieri's Inferno section of his Comedy as a personal venting
of spleen mixed with a lib-eral dose of S&M, but to do so would be to see it only
from our current, somewhat obsessed point of view. Dante was also obsessed, but
his objects of obsession—besides the lovely, lost Beatrice—centered around
Virgil's Aeneid and Aquinas's Summa Theologica. Little wonder then that the
Inferno is a staggeringly complex theology, at once an exploration of cosmic
structure and of the all too personal fear of death—that fear "so bitter—death is
hardly more severe" (Inferno, 1,7).
Dante saw that fear of death as the one sure source of poetic and creative energy. In
that respect, little has changed since the early 14th Century.
But let's turn on the TV and see what passes for theol-ogy these six and a half
centuries later. In lieu of the po-etry of the Aeneid, we have the south-baked howl of
the sweating televangelist. In the stead of the intellectual ca-thedrals of the Summa
Theologica, we have the entire cathode-ray-tubed, satellite-relayed, hair-sprayed and
cosmetic-troweled message boiled down -to two words: Send money.
Agreed, televangelists aren't the theologians of this century, and they are excessively
easy targets after the rev-elations of the last few years—the Jimmy Swaggart
vulgar-ities, the Rex Humbolt absurdities, and the Jimmy Bakker adulteries and
breakdowns. If it's any excuse, the follow-ing story was written before these
sideshows.
But the revelations were to be expected. As long as we live in a world where
"theology" has become a mixture of P.T. Barnum and Johnny Carson, where we
invite these parasites into our home via cable TV and satellite dish and radio ... well,
as the kid said in the classic New Yorker cartoon, "I say it's spinach, and I say to hell
with it."
                                         ***
On his last day on earth, Brother Freddy rose early, showered, shaved his chins,
sprayed his hair, put on his television make-up, dressed in his trademark three-piece
white suit with white shoes, pink shirt, and black string tie, and went down to his
office to have his pre-Hallelujah Breakfast Club breakfast with Sister Donna Lou,
Sister Betty Jo, Brother Billy Bob, and George.
The four munched on sweet rolls and sipped coffee as the slate-gray sky began to
lighten beyond the thirty-foot wall of bulletproof, heavily tinted glass. Clusters of tall,
brick buildings comprising the campus of Brother Freddy's Hallelujah Bible College
and Graduate School of Christian Economics seemed to solidify out of the predawn
Alabama gloom. Far to the east, just visible above the pecan groves, rose the
artificial mountain of the Mount Sinai Mad Mouse Ride in the Bible Land section of
Brother Freddy's Born Again Family Amusement Complex and Christian
Con-vention Center. Much closer, the great dish of a Holy Beamer, one of six huge
satellite dishes on the grounds of Brother Freddy's Bible Broadcast Center, sliced a
black arc from the cloud-laden sky. Brother Freddy glanced at the rain-sullen
weather and smiled. It did not matter what the real world beyond his office window
offered. The large "bay window" on the homey set of the Hallelujah Break-fast Club
was actually a $38,000 rear-projection television screen which played the same
fifty-two minute tape of a glorious May sunrise each morning. On Brother Freddy's
Hallelujah Breakfast Club, it was always spring.
"What's the line-up like?" asked Brother Freddy as he took a sip of his coffee, his
little finger lifted delicately, the pinky ring gleaming in the light of the overhead spots.
It was eight minutes until air time.
"First half hour you got the usual lead-in from Brother Beau, your opening talk and
Prayer Partner plea, six-and-a-half minutes of the Hallelujah Breakfast Club Choir
doing "We're On the Brink of a Miracle" and a medley of off-Broadway Christian
hits, and then your Breakfast Guests come on," said Brother Billy Bob Grimes, the
floor director.
"Who we got today?" asked Brother Freddy.
Brother Billy Bob read from his clipboard. "You've got Matt, Mark, and Luke the
Miracle Triplet Evangelists, Bubba Deeters who says he wants to tell the story again
how the Lord told him to throw himself on a grenade in 'Nam, Brother Frank Flinsey
who's pushing his new book After the Final Days, and Dale Evans."
Brother Freddy frowned slightly. "I thought we were going to have Pat Boone
today," he said softly. "I like Pat."
Brother Billy Bob blushed and made a notation on his thick sheath of forms.
"Yessir," he said. "Pat wanted to be here today but he did Swaggart's show last
night, he has a personal appearance with Paul and Jan at the Bakersfield Revival this
afternoon, and he has to be up at tomorrow's Senate hearing testifying about those
Satanic messages you can hear on CDs when you aim the laser between the
grooves."
Brother Freddy sighed. It was four minutes until air time. "All right," he said. "But
try to get him for next Monday. I like Pat. Donna Lou? How're we doing with the
Lord's work these days, little lady?"
Sister Donna Lou Patterson adjusted her glasses. As comptroller of Brother
Freddy's vast conglomerate of tax-exempt religious organizations, corporations,
ministries, colleges, missions, amusement parks and the chain of Brother Freddy's
Motels for the Born Again, Donna Lou was dressed appropriately in a beige
business suit, the se-riousness of which was lightened only by a rhinestone Hallelujah
Breakfast Club pin which matched the rhinestones on her glasses. "Projected
earnings for this fiscal year are just under $187 million, up three per cent from last
year," she said. "Ministry assets stand at $214 million with outstanding debts of $63
million, give or take .3 mil-lion depending upon Brother Carlisle's decision on
replac-ing the Gulfstream with a new Lear."
Brother Freddy nodded and turned toward Sister Betty Jo. There were three minutes
left until air time. "How'd we do yesterday, Sister?"
"Twenty-seven broadcast share Arbitron, twenty-five point five Nielsen," said the
thin woman dressed in white. "Three new cable outlets; two in Texas, one in
Montana. Current cable reaches 3.37 million homes, up .6 per cent from last month.
The mail room handled 17,385 pieces yesterday, making a total of 86,217 for the
week. Ninety-six per cent of the envelopes yesterday included dona-tions.
Thirty-nine per cent requested your Intercession Prayer. Total envelope volume
handled this year is 3,585,220, with an approximate 2.5 million additional pieces
projected by the end of the fiscal year."
Brother Freddy smiled and turned his gaze on George Cohen, legal counsel for
Brother Freddy's Born Again Ministries. "George?" Two minutes remained until air
time.
The thin man in the dark suit unhurriedly cleared his throat. "The IRS continues to
make threatening noises but they don't have a leg to stand on. Since all of the
ministry affiliates are under the Born Again Ministries exemption, you don't have to
file a thing. The Huntsville papers have reported that your daughter's house has been
assessed at one million five and they know that it and your son's ranch were built
with a three million dollar loan from the ministry, but they're just guessing when it
comes to salaries. Even if they found out ... which they won't ... your official annual
salary from the Board comes to only $92,300, a third of which you tithe back to the
ministry. Of course, your wife, daughter, son-in-law, and seven other family
members receive considerably more liberal incomes from the ministry but I don't
think..."
"Thank you, George," interrupted Brother Freddy. He stood, stretched, and walked
to the color monitor attached to the computer terminal on his desk. "Sister Betty Jo,
you said there were several thousand requests for the Personal Intercession
Prayer?"
"Yes, Brother," said the woman in white, laying her small hand on the console next
to her chair.
Brother Freddy smiled at George Cohen. "I told these folks I'd personally pray over
their letters if they'd send in a love offering," he said. "Might as well do it now. I've
got thirty seconds before Brother Beau goes into his intro. Betty Jo?"
The woman tapped a button and smiled as the list of thousands of names flashed by
on the color monitor. After each name was a code relating to the category of
problem for which intercession was requested according to the checklist provided
on the Love Offering form: H-health, MP-marital problems, $-money problems,
SG-spiritual guidance, FS-forgiveness of sins, and so on. There were twenty-seven
categories. Any one of Brother Freddy's two hundred mail room operators could
code more than four hundred intercession requests a day while simultaneously
sorting the letter contents into stacks of cash and checks while cueing computers to
provide the appropriate reply letter.
"Dear Lord," intoned Brother Freddy, "please hear our prayers for the receipt of
Thy mercy for these requests which are made in Jesus's name..." The list of names
and codes flashed past in a blur until the suddenly blank screen held only a flashing
cursor. "Amen."
Brother Freddy turned on his heel and led the suddenly scurrying-to-keep-up retinue
on the thirty yard walk to the Hallelujah Breakfast Club studio just as the program's
opening graphics and triumphant music filled the sixty-two monitors in the Broadcast
Headquarters' corridors, offices, and board rooms.


Brother Freddy knew there was a problem eighteen minutes into the program when
he introduced Dale Evans only to watch a tall, dark-skinned man with long, black
hair walk onto the set. Brother Freddy knew at once that the man was a foreigner; the
stranger's long hair was curled in ringlets which fell to his shoulders, he wore an
expensive three-piece suit which looked to be made of silk, his immaculately
polished shoes were of soft Italian leather, his starched collar and cuffs dazzled with
their whiteness, and gold cufflinks gleamed in the studio lights. Brother Freddy knew
that some mistake had been made; his born again guests—despite their personal
wealth—went in for polyester blends, pastel shirts, and South Car-olina haircuts if
for no other reason than to stay in touch with their video faithful.
Brother Freddy glanced down at his notes and then looked helplessly at the floor
director. Brother Billy Bob shrugged with a depth of confusion that Brother Freddy
felt but could not show while the red eye of the camera glowed.
The Hallelujah Breakfast Club prided itself on being live in three time zones. Brother
Freddy smiled at the ad-vancing intruder and wished they had gone with the
tape-delayed programs his competitors preferred. Brother Freddy usually prided
himself on the fact that he wore no earphone to hear the booth director's instructions
and com-ments, trusting instead on Brother Billy Bob's hand signals and his own
well-honed sense of media timing. Now, as Brother Freddy rose to his feet to shake
hands with the swarthy stranger, he wished that he had an earphone to learn what
was going on. He wished that they had a com-mercial to cut to. He wished that
somebody would tell him what was happening.
"Good morning," Brother Freddy said affably, retriev-ing his hand from the
foreigner's firm grip. "Welcome to the Hallelujah Breakfast Club." He glanced
toward Brother Billy Bob, who was muttering urgently into his bead microphone.
Camera Three dollied in for a close-up of the swarthy stranger. Camera Two
remained fixed on the long divan crowded with the Miracle Triplets, Bubba Deeters,
and Frank Flinsey grinning mechanically from be-neath his military-trimmed
mustache. The floor monitors showed the medium close-up of Brother Freddy's
florid, politely smiling, and only slightly perspiring face.
"Thank you, I've been looking forward to this for some time," said the stranger as he
sat in the velour guest chair next to Brother Freddy's desk. There was a hint of
Italian accent in the man's deep voice even though the En-glish was precisely
correct.
Brother Freddy sat, smile still fixed, and glanced to-ward Billy Bob. The floor
director shrugged and made the hand signal for "carry on."
"I'm sorry," said Brother Freddy, "I guess I've mixed up the introductions. I also
guess you're not my dear friend, Dale Evans." Brother Freddy paused and looked
into the stranger's brown eyes, surprised at the anger and intensity he saw there,
praying that this was only a sched-uling mix-up and not some political terrorist or
Pentecostal crazy who had gotten past Security. Brother Freddy was acutely aware
that the signal was being telecast live to more than three million homes.
"No, I am not Dale Evans," agreed the stranger. "My name is Vanni Fucci." Again
the hint of an Italian accent. Brother Freddy noted that the name had been
pronounced VAH-nee FOO-tchee. Brother Freddy had nothing against Italians;
growing up in Greenville, Alabama, he had known very few of them. As an adult he
had learned not to call them wops. He presumed most Italians were Cath-olic,
therefore not Christians, and therefore of little interest to him or his ministry. But
now this particular Italian was a bit of a problem.
"Mr. Fucci," smiled Brother Freddy, "why don't you tell our viewers where you're
from?"
Vanni Fucci turned his intense gaze toward the camera. "I was born in Pistoia," he
said, "but for the last seven hundred years I have lived in Hell."
Brother Freddy's smile froze but did not falter. He glanced left at Billy Bob. The
floor director was frantically making the signal of a star over his left breast. At first
Brother Freddy thought it was some obscure religious symbol but then he realized
that the man meant that Secu-rity ... or the real police ... had been called. Behind the
wall of lights and cameras a live studio audience of almost three hundred people had
ceased their usual background murmur of whispers and shiftings and stifled sneezes.
The auditorium was dead silent.
"Ah," said Brother Freddy and chuckled softly. "Ah. I see your point, Mr. Fucci. In
a sense all of us who were sinners have spent our time in Hell. It's only through the
mercy of Jesus that we can avoid that as our ultimate ad-dress. When did you finally
accept Christ as your Sav-iour?"
Vanni Fucci smiled, showing very white teeth against dark skin. "I never did," he
said. "In my day, one was not—as you Fundamentalists put it—'saved.' We were
baptized into the Church as children. But I made a slight mistake as a young man and
your so-called Saviour saw fit to condemn me to an eternity of inhuman punishment
in the Seventh Bolgia of the Eighth Circle of Hell."
"Uh-huh," said Brother Freddy. He swiveled around and gestured toward Camera
One to dolly in closer for an extreme close-up on him. He waited until he could see
only his own face on the floor monitor and said, "Well, we're having an enjoyable
conversation here with our guest, Mr. Vanni Fucci, but I'm afraid we're going to
have to take a break for a minute while we show you that tape I promised you of
Brother Beau and I dedicating the new Holy Beamer we installed last week in
Amarillo. Beau?" Below the frame of the close-up, out of sight of the view-ing
audience, Brother Freddy drew his right hand repeat-edly across his throat. On the
floor, Billy Bob nodded, turned toward the booth, and spoke rapidly into his
micro-phone.
"No," said Vanni Fucci, "let us go on with our conver-sation."
The floor monitors showed a long shot of the entire set. The Miracle Triplets sat
staring, the bottoms of their little shoes looking like exclamation marks. The
Reverend Bubba Deeters raised his right arm as if he was going to scratch his head,
glanced at the steel hook that was the re-minder of the Lord's Will during his Viet
Nam days, and lowered his arm to the divan. Frank Flinsey, a media pro, was staring
in astonishment at the three cameras where no lights glowed and then back at the
monitors which defi-nitely showed a picture. Brother Freddy was frozen with his
hand still raised to his throat. Only Vanni Fucci seemed unruffled.
"Do you think," said the Italian guest, "that if Dale had passed away before Trigger,
Roy would have had her stuffed and mounted in the living room?"
"Ah?" managed Brother Freddy. He had heard very old men make similar sounds in
their sleep.
"Just a thought," continued Vanni Fucci. "Would you rather I go on about my own
situation?"
Brother Freddy nodded. Out of the corner of his eye he saw three uniformed
Security men trying to get on stage. Someone seemed to have lowered an invisible
Plexiglas wall around the edge of the set.
"It actually has not been seven hundred years that I have been in Hell," said Vanni
Fucci, "only six hundred and ninety. But you know how slowly time passes in such
a situation. Like in a dentist's office."
"Yes," said Brother Freddy. The word was a little bet-ter than a squeak.
"And did you know that one condemned soul from each Bolgia is allowed one visit
back to the mortal world during our eternity of punishment? Much like your
Amer-ican custom of one phone call allotted to the arrested man."
"No," said Brother Freddy and cleared his throat. "No."
"Yes," said Vanni Fucci. "I think the idea is that the visit sharpens our torments by
reminding us of the plea-sures we once knew. Something like that. Actually, we are
only allowed to return for fifteen minutes, so the pleasures sampled could not be too
extensive, could they?"
"No," said Brother Freddy, pleased that his voice was stronger. The single syllable
sounded wise and slightly amused, mildly patronizing. He was deciding which
Biblical verse he would use when it was time to regain control of the conversation.
"That's neither here nor there," said Vanni Fucci. "The point is that all of the
condemned souls in the Seventh Bolgia of the Eighth Circle voted unanimously for
me to come here, on your show." Vanni Fucci leaned forward, his cuffs shooting
perfectly so that gold cufflinks caught the light. "Do you know what a Bolgia is,
Brother Freddy?"
"Ah ... no," said Brother Freddy, derailed slightly from his line of thought. He had
decided on a verse but it seemed inappropriate at right this instant. "Or rather ...
yes," he said. "A Bolgia is that duchess or countess or whatever who used to poison
people in the Middle Ages."
Vanni Fucci leaned back and sighed. "No," he said, "you're thinking of the Borgias.
A Bolgia is a word in my native language which means both 'ditch' and 'pouch.' The
Eighth Circle of Hell has ten such Bolgias filled with shit and sinners."
The silent audience was silent no longer. Even the cameramen gasped. Brother
Freddy glanced at the moni-tors and closed his eyes as he realized that his very own
Hallelujah Breakfast Club, the top-rated Christian program in the world except for
the occasional Billy Graham Cru-sade, would be the first program in TEN and CBN
history to allow the word "shit" to go out over the airwaves. He imagined what the
Ministry Board of Trustees would say. The fact that seven of the eleven Board
members were also members of his own family did not make the image any more
pleasant.
"Now listen here..." Brother Freddy began sternly.
"Have you read the Comedy?" asked Vanni Fucci.
There was something more than anger and intensity in the man's eyes. Brother
Freddy decided he was dealing with an escaped mental patient.
"Comedy?" said Brother Freddy, wondering if the man were some sort of deranged
standup comic and all of this a publicity stunt. On the floor, the cameramen had
swung the heavy cameras around and were peering in the lenses. The monitors
showed a steady shot framing only Vanni Fucci and Brother Freddy. Brother Billy
Bob was running from camera to camera, occasionally tripping over a cable or
coming to the end of his mike cord and jerking to a stop like a crazed Dachshund on
a short leash.
"He called it his Comedy," said Vanni Fucci. "Later generations of sycophants
added the Divine." He frowned at Brother Freddy, an impatient teacher waiting for a
slow child to respond.
"I'm sorry ... I don't..." began Brother Freddy. One of the cameramen was
disassembling his camera. None of the remaining cameras was aimed at the set. The
picture held steady.
"Alighieri?" prompted Vanni Fucci. "A dirty little Florentine who lusted after an
eight-year-old girl? Wrote one readable thing in his entire miserable life?" He turned
toward the guests on the divan. "Come on, come on, don't any of you read?"
The five Christians on the couch seemed to shrink back.
"Dante!" shouted the handsome foreigner. "Dante Alighieri. What's the deal here,
gentlemen? To join the Fundamentalists Club you have to park your brains at the
door and stuff your skull with hominy and grits, is that it? Dante!"
"Just one minute..." said Brother Freddy, rising.
"Who do you think you..." began Frank Flinsey, standing.
"What do you think you're..." said Bubba Deeters, getting to his feet and brandishing
his hook.
"Hey! Hey! Hey!" cried the Miracle Triplets, strug-gling to get their feet to the floor.
"SIT DOWN." It was not a human voice. At least not an unamplified human voice.
Brother Freddy had made the mistake once on an outdoor Crusade of standing in
front of a bank of thirty huge speakers when the soundman tested them at full
volume. This was a little like that. Only worse. Brother Billy Bob and others with
headphones on ripped them off and fell to their knees. Several overhead spots
shattered. The audience leaned backward like a sin-gle three-hundred-headed
organism, whimpered once, and adopted a silence unbroken even by the sound of
breath-ing. Brother Freddy and the guests on the divan sat down.
"Alighieri did it," said Vanni Fucci in soft, conversa-tional tones. "The man was a
mental midget with the imagination of a moth, but he did it because no one before
him did it."
"Did what?" asked Brother Freddy, staring in fasci-nated horror at the madman in
the crushed velour chair next to his desk.
"Created Hell," said Vanni Fucci.
"Nonsense!" cried Reverend Frank Flinsey, author of fourteen books about the end
of the world. "The Lord God Jehovah created Hell as He did everything else."
"Oh?" said Vanni Fucci. "Where does it say so in that grab-bag of tribal stories and
jingoist posturings you call a Bible?"
Brother Freddy thought that it was quite possible that he was going to have a heart
attack right there on the Brother Freddy's Hallelujah Breakfast Club hour going live
into three million three hundred thousand American homes. But even while his heart
fibrillated and his red face grew redder, his mind raced to come up with the
appropri-ate Scriptural verse.
"Let me tell you about an experiment performed in 1982," said Vanni Fucci, "at the
University of Paris-South. A group of quantum physicists headed by Alain Aspect
tested the behavior of two photons flying in opposite di-rections from a light source.
The test confirmed an under-lying theory of quantum mechanics—namely, that a
measurement made on one photon has an instantaneous ef-fect on the nature of
another photon. Photons, gentlemen, traveling at the speed of light. Obviously no
information could be transmitted faster than the speed of light itself, but the act of
defining the nature of one photon instanta-neously changed the nature of the other
photon. The con-clusion drawn from this is obvious, is it not?"
"Ah?" said Brother Freddy.
"Ah?" said the five guests on the divan.
"Precisely," said Vanni Fucci. "It confirms in the physical world what we in Hell
have known for some time. Reality is shaped by the first great mind which focuses
on measuring it. New concepts create new laws and the universe abides. Newton
created universal gravity and the cosmos rearranged itself accordingly. Einstein
defined space/time and the universe retrofitted itself to agree. And Dante
Alighieri—that neurotic little whimshit—created the first comprehensive map of hell
and Hell came into existence to appease the public perception."
"That's ridiculous," managed Brother Freddy, forget-ting the cameras, forgetting the
audience, forgetting every-thing but the monstrous illogic—not to mention
blasphemy—of what this crazy Italian had just said. "If that was ... true," cried
Brother Freddy, "then the world ... things ... everything would be changing all the
time."
"Precisely," smiled Vanni Fucci. His teeth looked small and white and very sharp.
"Then ... well ... Hell wouldn't be the same either," said Brother Freddy. "Dante
wrote a long time ago. Three or four hundred years, at least..."
"He died in 1321," said Vanni Fucci.
"Yeah ... well ... so..." concluded Brother Freddy.
Vanni Fucci shook his head. "You understand nothing. When an idea is strong
enough, large enough, comprehen-sive enough to redefine the universe, it has
tremendous staying power. It lasts until an equally powerful paradigm is formulated
... and accepted by the popular imagination ... to replace it. For instance, your Old
Testament God lasted thousands of years before it ... He ... was actively redefined
by a much more civilized if somewhat schizo-phrenic New Testament deity. Even the
newer and weaker version has lasted fifteen hundred years or so before being on the
verge of being sneezed out of existence by the al-lergy of modern science."
Brother Freddy was certain he was going to have a stroke.
"But who has bothered to redefine Hell?" Vanni Fucci asked rhetorically. "The
Germans came close in this cen-tury, but their visionaries were snuffed out before
the new concept could take root in the mass mind. So we remain. Hell persists. Our
eternal torments drag on with no more reason for existence than could be offered for
your little toe or vermiform appendix."
Brother Freddy realized that he might be dealing with a demon here. After almost
forty years of preaching about demons, teaching about demons, finding the spiritual
foot-prints of demons in everything from rock music to FCC legislation, warning
against demons being in the schools and kids' games and in the symbols on
breakfast cereal boxes, and generally making a fair-sized fortune by being one of the
nation's foremost experts on demons, Brother Freddy found it a bit disconcerting to
be sitting three feet from someone who might very well be possessed by a de-mon if
not actually be one. The closest he could recall to coming to one before this was
when he was around the Reverend Jim Bakker's wife Tammy Faye when her
"shoppin' demons were hoppin' " back before the couple's unfortunate publicity.
Brother Freddy clutched the Bible in his left hand and raised his right hand in a
powerfully curved claw over Vanni Fucci's head. "I abjure thee, Satan!" he cried.
"And all of the powers and dominions and servants of Satan ... BE GONE from this
place of God! In the name of JE-SUS I command thee! In the name of JE-SUS I
command thee!"
"Oh, shut up," said Vanni Fucci. He glanced at his gold wristwatch. "Look, let me
get to the important part of all this. I don't have too much time."
As the Italian began to speak, Brother Freddy kept his pose with the raised hand and
clutched Bible. After a minute his arm got tired and he lowered his hand. He did not
release the Bible.
"My crime was political," said Vanni Fucci, "even though that Short Eyes Florentine
put me in the Bolgia re-served for thieves. Yes, yes, I know you don't know what I'm
talking about. In those days the political battles be-tween we Blacks and the
dogspittle Whites were of great importance—a third of Dante's damned Inferno is
filled with it—but I realize that today no one even knows what the parties were, any
more than people seven hundred years from now will remember the Republicans or
Demo-crats.
"In 1293 two friends and I stole the treasure of San Jacopo in the Duomo of San
Zeno to help our political cause. The Duomo was a church. The treasure included a
chalice. But I didn't go to Dante's Hell just because of one little robbery about as
common then as knocking over a convenience store today. No. I have prime billing
in the Seventh Bolgia of the Eighth Circle because I was a Black and because Dante
was a White and the unfairness of it all pisses me off."
Brother Freddy closed his eyes.
Vanni Fucci said, "You'd think an eternity of wallow-ing in a trench of merde and
hot embers would be enough revenge for the sickest S&M deity, but that's not the
half of it." Vanni Fucci swiveled toward the Breakfast Club guests on the divan. "I
admit it. I have a temper. When I get mad I give God the fig."
Frank Flinsey, Reverend Deeters, and the Miracle Trip-lets looked blankly at Vanni
Fucci.
"The fig," repeated the Italian. He clenched his fist, ran his thumb out between his
first and index fingers, and thrust it rapidly back and forth. Based on the mass intake
of breath from the crowd, the symbol must have been clear enough. Vanni Fucci
swiveled back toward Brother Freddy. "And then, of course, when I do that, every
thief within a hundred yards—which is everyone in that god-damned Bolgia, of
course—turns into reptiles..."
"Reptiles?" croaked Brother Freddy.
"Chelidrids, jaculi, phareans, cenchriads, and two-headed amphisbands, that sort
of thing," confirmed Vanni Fucci. "Alighieri got that right. And then, of course,
every one of these damned snakes attacks me. Naturally I burst into flame and
scatter into a heap of smoking ashes and charred bone..."
Brother Freddy nodded attentively. Out of the corner of his eye he could see Sisters
Donna Lou and Betty Jo help-ing the three Security men use a chair as a battering
ram against the invisible barrier that kept them off the set. The barrier held.
"I mean," said Vanni Fucci, leaning closer, "it's not pleasant..."
Brother Freddy decided that when all of this was over he would take a little vacation
at his religious retreat in the Bahamas.
"And being Hell," continued Vanni Fucci, "the pieces, my pieces, don't die, they
just reassemble—which is the most painful part, let me tell you—and then, when I'm
back together, the unfairness of it all gets me so pissed off that ... well, you can
guess ..."
"The fig?" guessed Brother Freddy and clapped a hand over his own mouth.
Vanni Fucci nodded dolorously, "Both hands," he said, "And off we go again." He
looked directly into Camera One. "But that's not the worst part."
"No?" said Brother Freddy.
"No?" echoed the five Breakfast Club guests.
"Hell is a lot like a theme park," said Vanni Fucci. "The management is always trying
to improve the attrac-tions, add a more effective touch to the entertainment. And can
you guess what the Big Warden in the Sky has pro-vided the last ten years or so to
add to our torment?" The Italian's voice had climbed the scale as his anger visibly
grew.
Brother Freddy and the Breakfast guests vigorously shook their heads.
"BROTHER FREDDY'S HALLELUJAH BREAK-FAST CLUB!" screamed Vanni
Fucci, rising to his feet. "EIGHT TIMES A GODDAMNED DAY. 90-INCH
SYLVANIA SUPERSCREENS EVERY TWENTY-FIVE FEET IN BOLGIA
SEVEN!"
Brother Freddy pushed back in his chair as Vanni Fucci's saliva spattered his desk
top.
"I MEAN..." bellowed Vanni Fucci, his wide, glaring eyes fixed on something above
the catwalks, "...IT'S ONE THING TO SPEND ALL OF ETERNITY BURN-ING
IN HELL AND BEING RENT LIMB FROM LIMB EVERY FEW MINUTES BUT
THIS ... THIS..." He raised both arms skyward.
"No!" screamed Brother Freddy.
"No!" cried the Breakfast guests.
"THIS REALLY PISSES ME OFF!" bellowed Vanni Fucci and gave God the fig.
Twice.
Things happened very quickly after that. To get the full effect, one has to play back
the videotape in Extreme Slow Motion and even then the sequence of events can be
con-fusing.
Brother Freddy went first. He doubled over the desk as if an Invisible Force were
vigorously practicing the Heimlich Maneuver on him, opened his mouth to scream
only to find that three rows of long fangs there made that highly impractical, and then
grew scales and a tail faster than one could say "born again." The metamorphosis
was so fast and the movement afterward was so quick that no one can say for sure,
but most observers agree that the Reverend Brother Freddy looked a lot like a cross
between a giant bullfrog and an orange python in the brief second before
he—it—leaped across the desk with one thrash of its powerful tail and lashed itself
around Vanni Fucci from crotch to throat.
Frank Flinsey turned into something altogether differ-ent; in less than a second the
middle-aged Armageddon expert evolved into something resembling a six-armed
newt with a jagged tail-stinger straight out of Aliens. The thing used its tail to plow a
path through the carpet, floor, divan, and crushed velour to the hapless Vanni Fucci,
where it joined the Brother Freddy python-thing in a full-fanged attack. Experts
agreed that Flinsey was probably the pharean to Brother Freddy's chelidrid. There
was no doubt about Bubba Deeters transmogrifi-cation: the street preacher who had
found God in a foxhole deliquesced like day-old fungi, reformed as a green-striped
amphisband with a head at each end, and slithered toward Vanni Fucci to get in on
the action.
The Miracle Triplets instantly changed into slimy, dart-shaped things which shot
through the air, leaving contrails of green mucus, and embedded themselves deep in
Vanni Fucci's flesh. Scholars are certain that the Triplets had be-come what Dante
and Lucan had described as jaculi, but most viewers of the videotape today merely
refer to them as "the snot rockets."
While these creatures threw themselves on Vanni Fucci in a roiling, writhing,
snake-biting mass, there was more action on the set and elsewhere.
Brother Billy Bob had put his earphones back on just in time to turn into what a
nearby cameraman later de-scribed as "...a thirteen-foot-long garter snake with
lep-rosy." A second cameraman, since relieved of his duties by the Born Again
Ministries, was reported to have said, "I didn't see no change in Billy Bob. All them
directors look the same to me."
Sisters Donna Lou and Betty Jo fell to the ground only to slither onto the set a
second later as two immense pink worms. Much has been written about the phallic
symbol-ism inherent in this particular set of metamorphoses, but the irony was lost
on the three security guards who emp-tied their service revolvers into the giant
worms and then ran like hell.
The audience was not untouched. Vanni Fucci had said that all thieves within a
hundred yards of his blasphemy traditionally were transformed. Out of 319 audience
mem-bers present that morning 226 were unaccounted for the next day. The
auditorium was filled with screams as those who stayed human watched their
husbands or wives or parents or in-laws or the stranger next to them transform in a
flash into snakes, fanged newt-things, legless toads, giant iguanas, four-armed boa
constrictors, and the usual assortment of chelidrids, jaculi, phareans, cenchriads,
and amphisbands. A University of Alabama study done a month after the incident
showed that most of the thieves-turned-reptiles in the audience had been in sales, but
other occupations included—lawyers (8), politicians (3), visiting ministers (31),
psychiatrists (1), advertising executives (2), judges (4), medical doctors (4), stock
market brokers (12), absentee landlords (7), accountants (3), and a car thief (1) who
had ducked into the auditorium to get away from the Alabama Highway Patrol (2).
In less than ten seconds, Vanni Fucci was the center of a mass of scales and fangs
representing every reptile-thing in the Bible Broadcast Center auditorium. The Italian
struggled to get his hands free to get off another fig.
Brother Freddy sank its bullfrog-python chelidrid fangs deep into Vanni Fucci's
throat and the blasphemer burst into flame.
The studio filled with a stink of sulphur so strong that thousands of cable
subscribers later swore that they could smell it at home.
The entire mass of reptiles exploded into flame along with Vanni Fucci, disappearing
with him in a napalmish, orange-green flash that left the vidicon tubes of the RCA
computerized color cameras with a 40-second after-image.
The Hallelujah Breakfast Club set was suddenly empty except for the flaming
wreckage of the divan, desk, and crushed velour chair. Overhead sprinklers came on
and the "bay window" imploded with a shower of sparks and glass. The sunrise did
not survive.
Later that night, the Nightline video replay drew a sixty-share. On the same show,
Dr. Carl Sagan went on record with Ted Koppel as saying that the entire event could
be attributed to natural causes.
That week Brother Freddy's Hallelujah Breakfast Club Prayer Partners sent in Love
Offerings totalling $23,267,894.79.
Except for the occasional Billy Graham Crusade, it set a new weekly record.
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