Jeffrey Thomas, Voices from Hades by Jeffrey Thomas

the contrast of death? Or just the lust of a younger body whose urges he had forgotten over the past few decades?
    The short red hair of the center girl was sprouting anew from the scalp it had been torn from. It was like watching the minute hand of a clock, but it was happening. He noted the curly black hair of the lush-figured girl, the straight mousy brown hair of the thin girl, but the center girl had become his crucified Christ, flanked by nameless fellow sufferers, though in this case all three were resurrecting from the dead…
    Yes, he wondered if this were such a good idea after all. When they had eyes again, they would hate him as much as the Demons beside him. He couldn’t sneak his fingers through the mesh; they would withdraw from his touch. And even if he were able to persuade Eridan to lift the middle cage, free his little redhead, and even if she did submit to him, she would despise him. Reject him even as she gave in to him.
    Maybe it was better to return to Heaven, flawed as it was. To content himself as best he could with the zombie-like Fannie Mae. She accepted him mindlessly. Wasn’t that perfection, if he could get past the fact that she was essentially a robot? He mustn’t be so jaded, so spoiled. Heaven, however imperfect, could do that to you…
    Still, he knew he had to see this through. He had waited this long, and he wouldn’t feel closure unless he could see their restored faces closely. But even as he dreaded having their eyes on him, he couldn’t keep from admiring their bodies. Couldn’t keep from subtly pressing his erection against the bow rail. It was a blind eel aching to feed.
    He realized Eridan was directly behind his shoulder, and he flinched as the Demon purred, "Do you wish to go onto the island, sir?"
    "I can see well enough from here," Petty muttered.
    Muscle now layered the bone, threaded together with bright lattices of vein, elastic bands of tendon tethering this section to that. Were those raw globes in their sockets really eyes? Petty’s own eyes watered to gaze upon them.
    Soon, the outer rind of flesh started spreading like a fungus, a cancer, to again put a mask to the horrible beauty that lay beneath, just as it hid what lay inside the rest of their glorious bodies. The flesh asserting its mastery, even here in the spiritual world.
    The rotting miasma of the island was so overpowering this close that he cupped his hand over nose and mouth. Or was that reek from the faces themselves, rematerializing in a reverse dissection, a rewound flaying?
    The red hair of the center girl stopped growing at the edge of her jaw. That must have been its length when she died, and it would not grow beyond that point. Pretty red hair like copper, framing eyes that now showed blue irises, and black pupils, and which bulged and darted in mad agony.
    Then the eyes locked on him with such a force that he almost flinched again. They remained fixed on him. The girl’s struggles against the chains binding her wrists and ankles grew more frantic. Her body moved in serpentine jerks, like the eels had when they were worrying free a hunk of flesh. Her sobs rose, rose in a wail, a banshee shriek, a siren…
    And there were words coming on that scream; he could sense them struggling to take form as her flesh was doing. He could feel the words riding at the top of her cry, building toward a crescendo…
    "Dahhh…" the center girl screamed.
    "Oh God," Petty groaned, letting go of the rail as if blown back by the cry and the stare. He thumped backwards against Eridan, who did not budge.
    "Daaaahhh!"
    Petty had been disappointed in Heaven, but now he knew that Hades was much worse, even for the casual visitor. Because the remade face of the central girl, this Nike of Samothrace with its head restored, was that of Petty’s teenage daughter, Christina.
    "Daaaad!" the cry came in full at last, like lava exploding from a volcano.
    Petty whirled away and squeezed his eyes shut tightly. He clamped his hands