“Rode the sewer system until it spit me out in the ocean a mile offshore. I’m not a great swimmer, but a passing cruise ship threw me a life preserver. Unfortunately, it was snatched away at the last minute by a bald eagle in an Uncle Sam costume.”
I lean back against the cave wall and cross my legs.
“I was immediately swallowed by a humpback whale that then spit me out onto a dock where a carnival had set up a fireworks display that was scheduled to go off any minute. Well, you can guess what happened after that.”
The girl’s eyes narrow.
I shrug. “Choked on a breath mint.” I offer her my hand. “Rube Goldberg. How’s hell treating you?”
She doesn’t take my hand, just glowers, and says, “Heather.”
“Ah,” I say. “Conan Gray wishes he were you.”
“What do you want?” Heather asks.
“What can you tell me about this place?” I wave my finger at the bars and the darkness beyond. “What can I expect from eternal damnation?”
She sighs, but I know I’ve got her. Now she gets to show off how much she knows and how little I do.
“Don’t touch the bars,obviously.” She nods contemptuously at the man still writhing on the floor. “Bill still does it whenever a new prisoner shows up, like he wants people to feel sorry for him or something.”
I scoff. “What an asshole. I mean, we’re all Dead, right?”
“The Grim Reaper dudes only show up if there’s a fight or something,” she says, the first, tiniest hint of fear entering her voice.
“They’re, like, the prison guards?” I ask.
“Kinda? I guess? But they’re not the only ones. There are some, like, people too.They’rethe mean ones.” She shoots me a look like she’s going to quiz me on this later. “Sometimes they come for someone, take them somewhere.”
“And let me guess. They never come back?”
She shrugs. “Sometimes. Or sometimes they come back like Joey there.”
She points to a middle-aged man who has the same look as some of the souls we passed on our descent. A dying candle, flickering in its attempt to remain burning.
“It’s weird, isn’t it?” Heather asks, her voice struggling to remain firm. “I thought…Well, I just didn’t know I’d end up here.”
I can’t tell if she meanshereas in dead orhereas in Tartarus, though I guess either one is shocking.
But honestly, not too shocking. I mean, if you asked some normie in the Beforedeath what hell was like, this is the exact aesthetic they would describe, right? Pit of fire, wailing souls, et cetera, et cetera. So, my question is: Do the physics here play by the same rules as the rest of the Afterlife?
Does it look like this because it’s what people expect of hell? Or is humanity’s concept of hell based on this place? That may seem like a chicken-and-egg question, but if Tartarus is like this because its residents expect it to be so, I may be able to shape the world around me.
I finally finish the monkey’s paw and place it in my pocket, then crack my metaphysical knuckles. It’s time to get to work.
Thirty-One
I spend two days in hell.
I chat with all the souls that will talk. I keep track of any movement in the corridor. Once, I try sticking my hand between the bars to see if a demon will show up—turns out, no, only if you touch them, which Bill or Bob or whatever his name is does two more times.
I can’t see much outside the cell, as darkness overtakes anything beyond a few feet. I can hear other prisoners, though, and sometimes footsteps. The only smells are, believe it or not, fire and brimstone, and I can’t decipher any temperature change from one side of the cell to the next. It took me less than an hour to gather all this information, and the remainder of the time I’ve been.So.Bored.
It’s torture.
Who needs eternal torment when ennui does the job?
When I hear the shift of gravel for the first time in almost thirty-six hours, I’m so relieved I almost cry. As two figures emerge from the dark, I stand and shake out my arms. It’s showtime.