Chapter 2

In Hell, there's no day or night. There's no time designated to sleep and to be awake. Not that anyone could sleep here. Every surface is scorching, burning our souls as we cry out for rest.

When I was alive, I could sleep all through the night. The sky would be dark, not lit by an ever lasting flame. Stars would shine while I slept. They would watch over me and act as my nightlights if I were to awake during the night and become frightened.

"But back then," I think to myself, "I didn't know what fear was."

The guys are laughing now. If I had been paying attention, I would know they were laughing at me.

"Percy, my man," says Austin, his eyes bright with laughter. "Get your head of the smoke. Join us back down here in Hell." He raises his arms out in a showing gesture; as if I could forget where my everlasting soul was.

"Yeah, man! Jeremiah here was telling us his life story! He was just getting to the good part, too! With what's her name again, Jeremy? Rebecca?" Says Calvin with a raisingvoice and laughter mixing within his Irish accent.

Jeremiah looks from his face back to the pit of flames in the center of our circle, his eyes getting lost in the fire light. "Her name was Rhiannon," he says evenly.

Ezekiel kicks a stone into the pit lightly with his foot, smiling at the sensation. "And you were in love, weren't you lover boy? You were in love with the girl and you couldn't have her."

He shakes his head dismissively, seemingly not intimidated in the least by Ezekiel's antics. "In a way yes, but not really."

"You either had her or you didn't, Jeremy. There's no in between." Retaliates Austin with his eyes bright.

He sighs, something that none of us were expecting from him. Head bent downwards, he closes his eyes. "It's not always so clear cut. We were going to get married, have a life together, all of it. Then she passed away. The doctor said that the cancer shouldn't have set in as quickly as it did, that she should have had a few more years to live." He opens his eyes again, looking back into the pit. "But he was wrong."

"Yeah man? So what'd you do then?" I question.

His eyes seem to be lost to another time, but he still answers me. "I killed him."

Calvin laughs outright and loudly. "You? You killed the doctor?"

Jeremiah's fists are clenching even though his arms are crossed over his chest. None of the other guys seem to notice this though. "He took what was most precious to me, so I took what was most precious to him."

Now Austin's laughing along with Calvin. "Nerd boy wonder here killed someone. That was his great sin. I never would have guessed it! Would you have, Ezek?"

He's watching Jeremiah with a small smirk upon his face and eyes narrowing in. "No, no I wouldn't have guessed that'd be his unforgivable. If anything I thought it'd be for laundering money. Seems like something he'd do."

Now everyone's laughing either a little or a lot to themselves except for Jeremiah and me. He's watching the pit as smoke rises and flames occasionally sprout out like vines while I watch him.

The others go back to making their jokes, poking fun at Jeremiah every now and then, but mostly just at the other sinners and those whom they left behind in their own deaths. Sure, we're in Hell. But that doesn't mean that there aren't bullies and cliques here just like there is in the realm of those with a pulse.

They're talking more and more to themselves, no longer noticing Jeremiah and I. I walk over to him, and stand beside his unmoving form. "So," I say casually. "How'd you die?"

As though he was awaking from a daze, he shakes his head and blinks, looking from the fire to me. "I shot myself. Right here," he points under his chin with his thumb, as though he were giving me a thumb's up. "What about you, Percy? How'd you kick the bucket?"

"Got run over by a truck," I shrug nonchalantly. It's one of the most common ways to die after all, getting run over. "I was just crossing the street one day and then I was dead. Weird how quickly it happens, huh?"

He nods, trying to smile and failing. "Yeah, maybe. I don't know. For me it happened pretty slowly right up until the end."

"Yeah? Why's that?" I wonder aloud.

He's back to shaking his head again, more quickly this time and more thoroughly. "After Rhiannon passed away, everything just seemed so pointless; so unreal. She made me see the world differently and without her, I just couldn't be happy." With a sigh he looks back to me and smiles a broad grin. "Then I realized that I didn't have to be alone, without her, anymore. So I went and I shot the doctor then went home, looked through some photos and well," he looks around at the guys, all laughing and talking as if nothing bad had ever happened in their lives.

I look to the entrance of the smaller cave, watching the small cave's entrance. It's connected to the main cave, as all of the smaller caves and tunnels are. In that moment that I want to walk away and get lost. Not because of Jeremiah or the guys. But because they all seem to have a reason as to why they were down here and I don't. I don't know why I was sent to Hell and not Heaven.

"Well," he says with a laugh. "I guess you know how that story ends."

I can see the shadows of the other sinners on the cave's walls coming from down the tunnel. They're screaming out in pain, I can hear, but their moving so much, dancing it seems like.

"So you wanted to die?" I say under my breath while watching the shadows move.

"Yeah, it just felt right."

Now I'm nodding and thinking to myself, "It didn't feel that way for me. I felt wronged, cheated. Maybe I wasn't supposed to die. . . "

The shadows are intertwining now, mixing their forms with one another. "Hey, Jeremiah," I ask over their sounds. "Does God ever make mistakes? Like with people's deaths, I mean?"

Ezekiel laughs bluntly turning from the guys and looking me straight in my face. "You really think that thing up there doesn't? How long have you been in Hell, Percy? How long?"

"Far too long," I say thinking back over the time in my head. "So God does make mistakes then. What happens if one of those mistakes happens to you?"

"Me mum always said to me that God has a purpose for everything He does, that He's got a plan. So if you want to listen to me mum, I would have to tell you that old Ezek here is wrong." Calvin joins in with a smile plastered onto his lips.

Austin's shaking his head at the idea, saying, "What makes God any different than you and me? Just the fact that for some reason, He's up there and we're trapped down here. That's it. Now if you really want to say that He's some bloke with a plan larger than life, go ahead. Be my guest. But I choose to see Him for what He really is," he pauses, tilting his head back and looks up towards the cave's ceiling, perhaps expecting to see God just then at that very moment. "He's just some kid with a sick sense of humor."

They keep making their jokes and their opinions known, but all I can help to do is to look up at the black never ending ceiling. If there is a God, He couldn't be below us all the way down here, even if He does make mistakes. We are as low as we could be, down here in this oven of sinners and sin.

For some reason, the owners of the dancing shadows are screaming louder than what I'd expected of them. I leave the group, walking around the pit and turn the corner, seeing in the tunnel at least twenty people pushing themselves off of the cave walls, letting the burning stone touch their souls, causing them to scream out in pain. I could do nothing but watch dumbstruck. These people had chosen to break away from the main pack and live more precariously. It's odd, to say the least, but not unheard of.

A part of me wants to join them, let lose my pain and cry out to the higher being above. With a sigh, I move my foot over the ground, not even over a stone or tiny vine of fire, yet still feel the exhilarating rush of contact from the heat. It's better and worse than nothing and everything down here. Like a bitter sweet relationship. I want it to feel even remotely alive again, and yet I don't want it because it hurts worse than any pain I ever felt when I was truly alive. Guess there just can't be any honest positives to being dead, huh?

"Best part about life," says Austin after he's held his head over the pit for a few seconds, letting the smoke burn him as he smiles. "Has to be the possibility of death."

Ezekiel's shaking his head in agreement, but Calvin's doing the opposite, and saying, "I believe you're wrong there, my friend. It's got to be the sex."

Now's Ezekiel's turn to combat the opposition. "You can still have sex, even in death. Just ask Eve if you're really that curious." He looks down at the ground for a split moment with his eyes closed and licks his dry lips. "Death is the best part about life because you know that you're going to experience it, but you don't know when; makes everything so much more tasteful because it'll not last."

"Careful," Jeremiah says evenly, patting him on the back. "Next thing you know you'll be trying to make deals with Lucifer to get back up there. And you know how those always turn out," he reminds like a friend.

"What are you talking about?" I ask raising an eyebrow, joining into the conversation and snapping out of my trance.

Calvin lets out a low chuckle, watching as my face changes with my ever increasing interest. "What he's talking about, Percy, would be the devil's fondness of making not so good things happen to those who chose live in sin; such as ourselves, for example."

"You know the old saying, don't you?" Austin chimes in. "'How making a deal with the devil is bad for your health?' Who ever thought that up was one spot on fellow, that's for sure."

"You see, Percy, Percy," Calvin takes hold of the situation by slinging his arm over my shoulders. "Lucifer gets bored rather easily, in case you haven't noticed. And you know just as well as I do that he doesn't watch the gate as closely as a good king should," he begins to make some hand gestures to further emphasize what he's saying. "Don't you ever wonder what the good king is doing all day long on his throne of flames and bones?"

The others are watching us closely with a fire in their eyes that I've begun to recognize as their excitement and joy. I shake my head in agreement in response to Calvin's question like a trained zombie lap dog.

"Well, he's always making deals. Bets too. He's quite the gambler with fate, although he always seems to have a pretty good hand. Especially seeing as to how he always keeps a deck of cards up his sleeves."

I scrunch my forehead thinking. "But we can go to him? And make these deals?" I wonder aloud, remembering Jeremiah's warning to Ezekiel just a few minutes ago.

"Don't get any dim ideas, boy!" Calvin says angrily, adding a playful slap to the back of my head. "You make a deal with the devil and the devil always wins."

"No matter what," Jeremiah agrees solemnly yet nonchalant.

I sigh and look at everyone's faces, square in their eyes. "Look, it's not like I would do anything, even if I could, which I can't. You guys won't let me."

Ezekiel seems sort of out of it, not really looking at me as I scan all of the guys' faces. His hazel eyes seem almost lost in a cloud of smoke that snuggly fit over his line of vision, yet he doesn't seem to mind. All he does is watch the conversation continue on as I know his thoughts drift.

"When you mess with Satan, things always seem to take a turn for the worst." Jeremiah says thoughtfully watching my expression. "Even when you think that things can't."

"Like Gale, you know, the guy from like the eighteen hundred's? Well, he went to the devil, asking him to grant him life once more. Know what happened to him?" Austin asks looking around the group with knowing eyes. "Seriously, do you guys know what happened to him?"

I shake my head no. To tell the truth, I always avoid the guy. For some reason, he gives me the creeps like Adam gives the others a strange vibe. Apparently the others don't know what has happened to Gale either though.

"That's just it. No one knows. He's been gone for months in the living's time. No one's seen him." He looks excited and alive, more so than when I've seen him submit to the pain. "The old geyser has become a mystery in his death."

"Cut the-" But Calvin doesn't get a chance to finish his sentence because a fierce howling begins resounding throughout the tunnel, booming and bouncing off of the smaller cave's walls.

We stand there for a moment, waiting for the ear splitting agony to wither in upon its self, for its owner to realize that no matter how much he or she screams at the world, the walls, the sinners and creatures, that their pain won't go away. That they won't be waking up from this nightmare with any number of jolts to their system. They'll eventually learn that they don't have to live in their pain, but that escaping into it every now and then will help.

But I seriously doubt that he or she realizes all of that within the time that it takes for the howler to ease their auditiable pain into a less than appealing sound that is still bearable for everyone else to hear. But who knows? Not everyone dead or alive is as dumb as me.

"Look," Calvin says as he shakes his head, trying to get the ringing out of his ears. "Just take our advice, kid. Messing with Satan's bad sport and as Austin here's just explained about Gale-o," he sticks a finger into his ear and swishes it around, "nothing too amazing happens to you."

"But he could be alive. He should be alive," I protest. I don't see why they would think other wise. "Gale asked for life again and hasn't been seen since. Lucifer must have given it to him."

I hear a low chuckle to my right and chalk it up to Austin, seeing as to how he next says, "Yeah, he gave it to him alright."

Jeremiah takes the opportunity to place a hand on my shoulder, looking at me and just at me, not at the flames or at anything else in Hell. "Percy, there are worst things than being dead. And trust me on this and this alone," he pauses caught in a memory.

But Calvin steps in and finishes his thought for him. "You don't want to know what those things are."

Reviews

[Simplicity]

This is interesting, the way you characterize Hell and everyone in there.