Seven Demons by Aidan Truhen (best motivational books for students TXT) 📕

I will bet you ten million Swiss francs right here and now that in real life the holding net does not deploy and the current takes you.

Down.

And down.

Forever.

Like that.

In the video brochure on the Kircheisen website there is even a little animated fish called Egli who shows you around. When the magnet gets switched on he laughs his fishy ass off at the burglar guy who is wearing a stripy mask under his JIM suit and carrying a swag bag.

“I find the sound very soothing,” the Hermès lady says, and we all say yes of course it is very soothing of course.

It is not soothing.

If there is a hell anywhere it is here and it is made of the same clear cold stuff you drink in bottles in fancy restaurants and you just look at it and know that it would kill you and it does not care.

Would not notice.

The Teufelhammer is just like the universe.

I do not like when the universe is bigger than me.

—

We go up in the gondola and I say again: We are not climbing this thing. Not an option. The rock has vertical and even overhanging sides with a plateau where the castle is and above the plateau there is a tower of stone like a single finger telling you to go fuck yourself.

This being Switzerland the mountain is not known locally as the Go Fuck Yourself it is known as the Kuhglocke or cowbell, which is cozier I guess but does not really express the identity of the thing. The castle itself is 711 meters up from the valley floor and is accessed exclusively by the cable car and as you sit in it and think about explosions you remember it is a little metal bubble suspended on a high-tension wire cord rope. Looking up and down you can see that the gondola stations at both ends are heavily fortified. Saul looks at me and I look at Saul and Saul makes a face like he does not immediately know what kind of can opener you use for this we do not have one and if we had one we would right now need a bigger one.

I go over to Rex and I whisper maybe thermite and Rex says maybe. Maybe just a nuke. A small nuke would not be overkill, Rex says, because you’d need an awful lot of thermite.

Rex likes thermite and who doesn’t. Thermite is when all the oxygen that is married to iron or copper gets horny and runs off for explosively hot sex with aluminum and their chemical love creates a pillar of fire that burns white and enormous. A detonating thermite grenade will turn steel into soup in a few seconds but gosh.

Most steel.

Maybe not this.

—

The gondola takes six minutes to go from the ground to the top. As we reach the upper station it’s kind of like being swallowed by a whale. A big reinforced concrete whale specified to resist a low-yield nuclear blast of the mid-1960s vintage so you know now just basically a nuclear popgun but still hashtag nuclear so there’s that. You can see the battleship doors beyond that, just a glint: defense in depth. Volodya sighs.

Mountains are poetry from the earth, Price.

Yeah still wish this one was smaller.

Nyet. It is as it should be. Big strong mountain. Otherwise why are we here?

True fact I suppose. But still.

The Hermès lady directs our attention to a goat on the cliff. We look at the goat for a while. The goat looks back and then quite deliberately pees off the ledge so that a stream of yellow goat urine falls three quarters of a kilometer to the valley below.

The goat is mocking me.

—

The bubble gagagagagonks its way through the machinery at the top of its run and goes back down again. In the lobby Volodya gives Doc a spontaneous hug. He lifts her right off the ground.

“Put me down you idiot.”

“The mountain is very beautiful. The world is alive Doctor it is joy. So we hug.”

“You hug I get lifted in the air you ape put me down.”

“Nyet.”

“Da.”

“Nyet.”

“Da or I will scream that I am being abducted by a giant Soviet and they will rouse the militias.”

But he won’t until she hugs him back.

“Idiot,” says Doc.

“Sure,” Volodya says all smug, “Sure. I am idiot. But still is beautiful day.”

And then we go out into the street and a tiny little Sound of Music–looking motherfucker comes out of a pastry shop and stabs me in the leg.

—

It hurts getting stabbed in the leg. It communicates like few other things communicate that someone would like you to fuck the fuck off.

Doc says: “Do not touch the—”

(ZwinggggSMASH.)

(That is the noise bullets make when they are fired from a long way away.)

(It is one of the few other things that communicates more than being stabbed in the leg communicates that someone would like you to fuck the fuck off.)

(Bang.)

(That is the noise of the shot being fired it comes really late it is quite annoying. Now we are hiding behind a postbox. Swiss postbox. Good iron construction. It is a criminal offense on a pretty massive scale here to interfere with the postal service Volodya said so someone is in big trouble also probably shooting people in a built-up area for just no good reason that is likely to be a no-no also. That and stabbing but Evil Hansel is a minor so probably some sort of really shiny Lego-based rehab for him if I don’t catch him first and cut off his pointy little Sound of Music–looking motherfucker head with—eheheh—a Swiss Army knife, which I will totally buy for the—)

“DO NOT TOUCH—”

“I am NOT—”

“Do not touch the fucking knife Price for—”

“I am not touching it—”

“You are touching it how are we having this conversation DO NOT TOUCH THE—”

“I AM NOT—”

(ZwingggSMASH.)

“In fact you ARE that is—”

(Bang.)

“Cops will be here any—”

“That may or may not be a good—DO NOT TOUCH—”

“It’s in my fucking leg of course I am