Hell and Back Read online

  “This would be a lot easier if you would cooperate,” the woman sighed.

  “I’d cooperate if you weren’t dragging me to hell!”

  The woman glanced at the man. “I hate underworld days. Such a pain and no one comes easily.”

  “Don’t make me,” I said with a sniffle. “Don’t make me go in there.”

  “And where exactly are you supposed to go, then?” asked the man.

  “I don’t know,” I said, wishing I could wipe away my tears. “What would have happened if I’d said I was an atheist?”

  The two of them shrugged. “Nothing,” said the woman. “You’d cease to exist.”

  “Oh.” As terrified as I was of hell, the thought of being dead forever was even worse. To have your life ended, nothing left—that was horrific. Out of my two options, I’d made the right choice.

  I had been quiet for several moments, and the woman turned to me. “Are you ready?” she asked.

  Tears spilled down my cheeks. I shook my head.

  She pressed her lips into a tight line and began to pull me. “Come on.”

  “No,” I gasped, wrenching my arm, trying to break free from her. “No, please no. Please no.”

  I’d taken some self-defense courses while I was alive, mostly as a way to stay in shape. I knew how you were supposed to turn your arms or duck, where the vulnerable spots to hit were supposed to be, but I couldn’t manage any of that. They held me too tight to twist away, and I couldn’t reach the backs of their knees or the hollows of their necks. They held me tight and had no intention of letting go. Likewise, I had no intention of going quietly.

  “No!” I screamed, using all the air in my lungs. “Let go! I won’t! Stop!”

  They acted like they didn’t hear me. They didn’t even blink.

  “Let me go! Let me go!”

  When that didn’t work, I used all the strength I had, all my body weight, writhing in their hands so that I was no longer their prisoner. It didn’t matter to me that I had nowhere to go; all my energy was invested in my savage attempt at escape. I tried to kick, tried to throw elbows, but they remained strong like statues. I refused to give up.

  I continued to fight them, but their grip was iron-tight, their hands digging into my arms like vises. No amount of twisting or turning could stop them from dragging me closer and closer along the concrete, closer and closer to door number seven. My heart dropped as we came to a stop in front of it, the number seven attached to the metal door with rivets so it couldn’t be taken off easily.

  The woman nodded at the guard beside the door, and he opened it once more. The heat broiled my skin, but none of the guards flinched. Moving from beside me to behind me, the two guards pushed me in front of the door.

  “Please,” I choked out. “Please don’t.”

  My words fell on deaf ears. Together, the two guards shoved me inside the furnace. The door slammed shut behind me.

  Instantly I turned around, but the door had disappeared, only a rock wall was there now.

  Just like they had in the hallway, hands clamped down on my arms and I was yanked away from the spot where the door had been. I whipped my head up to see who had a hold of me. The figures were dressed head to toe in black, and like the guards, their grip was inescapable.

  I screamed, or at least, it felt like I was screaming. I took in a sharp breath of air and felt my diaphragm compress as the sound left my mouth, but I couldn’t hear it. My screams were lost with the screams of the other souls trapped in this place, all of us begging for mercy and a way out. But with so many screams, they all became lost together.

  My entire body could feel the high temperature surrounding me. As I was dragged across the hot ground, heat rose through the soles of my feet. All the heat was coming from the center of the room, that pit of fire, but on the ground, small fires burned, pieces of coal and bits of ash that had made their way from the pit. The whole place was shaped like a circle, cells blocked off by bars lining the perimeter. There were more levels than I could count, some below me, some above me. Dark figures, some vaguely human-shaped, like the ones dragging me, were flitting around the levels. Other, larger shapes had wings and tails and horns. I didn’t know which terrified me more.

  I tried to breathe, but it was so difficult. The heat and the stench filled my lungs, coupled with the hyperventilating from my panic. Each breath singed my throat and lungs, forcing me to cough. It was what I imagined it was like to have a panic attack, coupled with inhaling fire.

  I didn’t fight to escape like I had in the hallway. There was no point anymore. Where would I go? The door to the hallway was gone. It had disappeared into the wall, and I couldn’t see any other doors through the orange glow of the pit.

  I looked over at my guards. One was maybe a few inches taller than me, his hair short, nearly buzzed. I couldn’t see exactly what he looked like, but from where his hand clutched my arm, I could tell his skin was darker than mine. He wore glasses, the light catching in the silver frames.

  The other man was much taller than me, maybe by a foot, with longer blond hair and skin nearly the same shade as mine, as far as I could tell. Both men were dirty, scuffed with soot, their clothes torn. Neither of them looked at me, keeping their gazes straight ahead as they pulled me across the burning ground. They walked much faster than I did, with a purpose, and I struggled to keep up with them.

  I lost track of how long we had been walking. Even with all the levels stacked on top of each other, they were still wide and spacious. Hell was packed full. Plenty of people doing penance for their sins.

  The heat was making it hard for me to think. My movements were slow, lethargic as I tried to keep up.

  “Where are we going?” I managed to croak out, but neither man answered me.

  “Please,” I said, my voice rough. “Please, where are we going?”

  Like the guards in the hallway, they didn’t answer me either. They continued to drag me across the dirt floor. In any other situation it would be inhumane, but how could I expect anything different here?

  The two men brought me to a stop outside an empty cell. We had passed by dozens, maybe hundreds of cells by that time. I couldn’t see into any of them—they were too dark—but I could see dark shapes inside. They were occupied. This one wasn’t. I didn’t ask why. The men wouldn’t answer me even if I did.

  The cell was already open. As we stood in front of it, I could tell it was small, maybe the size of a bathtub, a few feet deep and a few more feet long. The two men pulled me toward the door and I was clutched with a sudden sensation of claustrophobia.

  “No,” I said. “Please. Don’t make me go in there. Please. Please don’t make me go in there.”

  It didn’t make a difference. I thought I felt the man on my left, the shorter one, pause for a moment, but that could have been my imagination. They didn’t waste any time throwing me into the cell. The door clanged shut behind me, and the shorter man pulled out a ring of keys and slid one into the lock.

  For a brief moment my eyes met his, but he flickered his gaze away.

  I clutched at the bars. “Please, don’t leave me here.”

  The man shook the gate, ensuring it was locked. Satisfied that it was, he turned around and walked away from me.

  I was left staring out of my cell at the pit of hell.

  Chapter Three

  I sank down against the stone wall of the cell, looking out through the bars. If I pointed my toes, I could touch the cell door. The width was maybe a foot wider, maybe two. I probably couldn’t lie down flat on my back in here.

  That was the point, probably. Irritate me as much as possible when I wasn’t being tortured. And though I couldn’t see it, I knew there was torture. I could hear the screams emanating from the pit. I wasn’t sure if it was better or worse that I couldn’t see it. I wouldn’t want to even if I could; it would make me sick. Mitchell had watched wrestling and MMA in the living room sometimes, and I could never hold my gaze at the TV for long. It made me s
ick to my stomach to see those men and women beating each other to a pulp. Yet I didn’t know what was going on down there, didn’t know what tactics they were using, didn’t know what I was going to be in store for when my number was called.

  Despite the heat, I wrapped my arms around myself. It had to be over a hundred degrees in here. Had I been alive, I’d be dying of heat stroke right now, but I doubted I’d even have the luxury of passing out or sleeping, never mind the release of death. Maybe I should have chosen atheism.

  I leaned my head back against the rock wall. I had thought the floor was dirt, but it was soot, dark and stinking. I brushed it off on my pants. I was still wearing what I had worn when I died, jeans and a black T-shirt, but my hat was gone and so were my sunglasses. My shirt had already started turning gray, as far as I could tell in the dim light.

  My eyes were beginning to adjust. They were strained, certainly, by having nothing but the orange glow, but I was beginning to make out more and more through the darkness. I couldn’t see much in the levels above me; that was shrouded in darkness. I could see a little bit of the levels below, dark shadows in locked cages. Thousands of souls, millions locked away in here. What had the woman said in the waiting room? A hundred people died each minute? And say half of those went to hell, or their religion’s equivalent...that meant at least a few million others just like me were locked in here. Some worse, to be certain, like Hitler. Some probably even better. I hadn’t been the worst human being while I was alive, but I hadn’t been as good as I could have been. Clearly, my bad deeds had outnumbered my good ones enough to send me here. This was my karma, and I was positive that it was going to be a bitch.

  I pinched my lips together, drawing my knees up to my chest. How long would I be waiting here before I was dragged out and tortured? Did time even exist down here?

  My heart raced. I was certain that the waiting was a part of the torture.

  Dark shapes floated in and out of my vision, darting in and out of shadows. All the dark shapes in the cells were human, and many of the guards walking around outside of the cells were human. But there were creatures, and though I couldn’t make out all of their features, they terrified me. Some were bigger than others, but none were small. Some had long tails, some had wings, some had horns, some had talons, and some had all three. They mostly circled the pit, drawn by the torture and smell of blood, if we even bled.

  I was curious, but I had no way to know if I could still bleed. There was nothing sharp in this room, no pointed rocks or sharp edges for me to cut myself on. I could feel pain, that much was clear from the heat searing my skin.

  I lifted my wrist to my mouth and bit hard. I was worried I wouldn’t be able to pierce the skin; like when you try to hurt yourself but your body stops you. But I could. The metallic taste of blood filled my mouth. Interesting.

  I wiped the blood away as I glanced back out of my cell. From near the pit, someone was watching me. It was hard to tell, because everything was so dark, but it looked like it might be one of the guards who had hauled me from the hallway into my cell, the one who was only a few inches taller than me, with skin a little darker. I didn’t know for sure that he was watching me; his face was completely dark, obscured by shadow, but I could feel his eyes on me. I could feel that I was being watched. I shifted uncomfortably on the floor, glancing away and at the wall instead. I could still feel his eyes on me even if I couldn’t see him. It was all part of the torture, I supposed. I had never liked being watched, and so it made sense that whoever was in charge of making prisoners miserable would have planted someone to watch me and make me miserable.

  How long would this last? This man staring at me made me so self-conscious. I glanced back, but he was still there, his body still turned toward me, just like I knew he would be. And though I couldn’t see his eyes, I felt ours lock. I was staring at him, and he was staring back.

  I looked down at my feet. My pink Converse were now dingy and dirty and the plastic on the soles was squishy against the ground. My heart had been racing but suddenly it slowed. I swallowed, my throat dry and sore from the hot air, and looked back up.

  The man was gone.

  Now that I had no one watching me, I climbed to my feet. I stood and leaned against the rock wall, closing my eyes for several minutes. When I opened them again, my eyes had adjusted further to the darkness. I could see a little bit better.

  I still had a hair tie around my wrist, and I pulled back my dark hair into a ponytail. Having it off my neck helped a little bit. Interestingly, I felt like I should be sweating, but I wasn’t. I could bleed but couldn’t sweat. Odd.

  I approached the bars. They were some sort of metal, but I wasn’t sure what. It had to be something with a high melting point. I wrapped my fingers around two of the bars. I’d expected them to be hot, but they weren’t. I tried to shake them, but they held firm. I couldn’t rattle them at all, not like they could in the movies. I ran my hands along the bars, trying to find some sort of weakness, but there was none. The bars were firm, and they held fast. Of course they were; hell couldn’t just have its prisoners walking around free all the time.

  I moved my hands to the lock. It was a simple key lock: slide the key in and unlatch the door. I felt through my hair, but I hadn’t worn bobby pins that day. Not that it mattered; I had no idea how to pick a lock anyway. I’d read about it in plenty of Nancy Drew books, but I’d never been successful at it in real life. Once I’d locked myself out of the house, and another time out of the car, but a bobby pin had never been what had gotten me inside.

  The lock wasn’t going to open for me unless I could snag a key, and there was no way a guard was going to get close enough to let me steal his key ring. Even I could get out, where on earth would I go? I saw no doors, no method of escape. And even if I did get out of hell, then what? Back to that hallway? Back to that waiting room? Then what? I couldn’t stay in that limbo forever. It would be easy for someone to spot me and have me dragged back here. There was no way that I was going to get back to Earth, or even into heaven.

  I knew that. But at the very least, I wanted out of this cell. It was too small. I thought I might suffocate in here. My legs ached from being pulled up to my chest. I wanted to stretch out, to relax.

  I turned to the walls between the cells, looking for some sort of crack in the separations. The walls were made of stone, and though I pounded my fists, there wasn’t even dust coming off of the wall. They were sturdy. I wouldn’t be getting through this way.

  “Is someone there?”

  The voice was soft, just loud enough to cut through the constant screams.

  “Hello?” I asked, pressing my ear to wall.

  “Hello?” The voice was female, perhaps middle-aged.

  “I’m Meg,” I said.

  “Theresa.”

  I glanced out my cell door, but no one was watching. I suspected I wasn’t supposed to be talking to the people in the cells next to me. That was why the walls were so thick. I was shocked I could hear her at all.

  “How long have you been here?” I asked her.

  “I don’t know.” Her voice trembled. “I don’t really have any concept of time.”

  I could understand that. “I just got here.”

  “Where are you from?” she asked me.

  “Minneapolis,” I said. “You?”

  “Same. I think they try to group us together, you know?”

  That made no sense to me, but I only nodded.

  “When did you die?” I asked her.

  “Twelfth of June,” she said.

  “What year?”

  She had died just this year, only about a week before I did. I told her this.

  “Like I said, they group us together.”

  “Do you know how you died?” I asked.

  “Cancer. Breast. You?”

  I shook my head, despite knowing she couldn’t see me. “I’m not sure. The woman in the office said it was instant.”

  “You didn’t even have a chance
to say goodbye to anyone?”

  “No. I was with my boyfriend and best friend, that’s all I remember.”

  “So you didn’t say goodbye to your parents?”

  I swallowed. “No.”

  “That’s all right,” she said. “Your mother hated you anyway.”

  I pulled away from the wall, shocked. “What?”

  “Your mother. She never really loved you. She only pretended out of obligation.”

  I blinked back tears. Apparently I could still cry here. “What?”

  “She blamed you for her marriage to your father. If she hadn’t gotten pregnant with you, she never would have married him. She always resented you for that.”

  “How did you know my mother?” I asked.

  “She was always miserable. She could never really stand up for herself when your father yelled. But she was miserable. She told you a few times.”

  “Yes, but—”

  “She loved to tell everyone else, though. She couldn’t divorce your father because she didn’t have a job. So instead, she stayed in a miserable marriage and told everyone how she stayed together for the kids. Stayed together for you.”

  “Who are you?” I demanded.

  “She hated her life, and it was all your fault. She never got a chance to tell you that, but it didn’t matter. You knew anyway, didn’t you?”

  “Shut up. Just shut up,” I said. “Stop talking.”

  “Your sisters hated you too. They thought you were such a bitch, so aloof. Did you know they didn’t even cry when they found out you had died? They sort of just shrugged it off. There were girls from high school that even cheered. They read your obituary and they called each other up and giggled to each other about what a fucking loser you were, and how the whole world will be better off without you.”

  “Stop it, stop!” I put my hands firmly over my ears, trying to block out the sounds.

  The voice continued, louder than before. “You’d thought about killing yourself before, right? Middle school, mostly, but always put it off. Do you know what things would have been like for everyone around you if you’d done it?”