Hell Zoo

"Hither a shade shrieking out of the darkness at us. They can strike three times the length of their own shadow!" Bumbled the tour guide. He tossed a square of Captain Crunch to the grasping wraith. My son gasped, my daughter leaned in as if to watch the phantom digest the cereal. Her hand shot up with all the eagerness of a meth head playing Bingo. "Where the fuck do these things live?!" She had taken to cursing early. She threw back a shot of tequila from her pink Limited Too pocket flask. Drinking too. "Well, these dudes are endemic to the Cocytus Valley in the 6th Circle." She looked longingly at me. "Why haven't you taken us on vacation there yet, you lazy shitlord?" Fuck. Time for another speech about how being a single demon dad was hard enough on her bummer of a father? No, can't show weakness. Engage dad mode! "Go for it!" I tossed her the keys to my matte purple soccer demon dad van. "Hop on the Fields of Punishment Beltway and get off right after the third Dixie Stampede in the Suicide Forrest. Just don't mess with my stations." She turned the keys over in her grubby, infernal hands.

"Maybe after I see the live human taint threshing." She chucked the keys back at me, hurling them over my head and into the wraith cage. An ethereal claw grabbed them and retreated into the blackness. My son covered his eyes and began shaking. "Don't worry. I've got a spare set under the wheel well." I don't. Peaking out from behind his hands he squeaked, "Can we go home now?" Dagona slapped him so hard it knocked his baby third eye out. Valac began to weep. I picked up the disembodied eye and put my arm around his shoulder. "You're becoming a man" I said. He cried harder. "Can I have my eye back?!" "Hell no! This is a keepsake." The eye blinked at me."It's also an insurance policy. If you ever get it in your shitty little head to turn on me, I can use this eye to destroy you!" I took several minutes then to admire my own parenting with my son weeping at my knees and my daughter wreaking untold havoc. I put the eye in my back pocket and ushered my demon spawn along behind the trundling tour guide.

Next stop was always a favorite of mine, the succubus pit. There's nothing quite like watching a gaggle of large breasted harpies frying cocks on the stove. "These demonesses are part of the subgenus Foodie" the guide chortled. Somewhere between his smug delivery and cocked eyebrow I was beginning to like this guide. I nudged my kids with the get-a-load-of-this-guy force all demon dads instinctively know. "Somebody blew their nudge load again!" Dagona cackled. The whole group, even the succubi, laughed at me. To take some of the heat off me I launched into a speech about my plan to give the succubi their own cooking challenge show. Spitballing I came up with name Gnawed and the subtitle "Penis Al Dente for Vagina Dentata". As hard a sell as it was to those fat, greasy tourists, my children proved even harder to impress. Dagona was never fond of word play, but I figured these ultra violent femmes might pique her interest. She, however, took far more pleasure in the neighboring Face Hugger enclosure. She described them as "forced Halloween" which I thought was a pretty cute way to talk about those murderous face spiders. Valac, well, he was wailing like a banshee in the throws of the saddest orgasm of her life. The succubi were disturbed and I tried to take some pride that my son was creepy enough to unsettle those broads. I like to tell myself he's basically a social terrorist, his suicide bomb being equal parts disdainful histrionics, pathetic sycophancy,   and a pinch of perv to be.

There comes a time when every dad realizes he might as well stop shoeing away the vagrants of vice from his facade of fatherhood. Just let 'em set up shop, piss on the walls, and solicit hobo sex from the strangely interested passerby. That moment is known by most as birth, and so I, not interested in bucking the trend, have treated fatherhood like an all-inclusive booze cruise. When the opportunity arose, somewhere between the bone horror installation and the fire penguin tank, I slunk away to smoke what was arguably the fattest doob of my entire fatherhood. The heady buds left me nearly incapacitated, so when that over-eager teenage security guard bum rushed me all I could do was curse the nearby chupacabras for not alerting me to his presence sooner. Escorted by the pimply punk, I found myself in the zoo detention center along with a gallimaufry of hooligans, most notably my daughter. Dagona was howling and demanding that other people shit so she could toss their excrement at the guards. However, upon seeing me, she let a smiley turd drop from her hand and entwined me in a big hug. "They tossed me in this joint after I threw Valac into the goblin compound. They ripped his face off!" I smiled warmly at her and knew we could at least form a reasonably well-respected prison gang together.