Penemue's Inferno

by Ramy Vance

  He must have said that to me during a hundred different nights while I helped the huge lug into the haystack he called a bed.

  Literal breakage …

  But no matter how much he drank, he was never violent. Don’t get me wrong … he had the capacity for violence. But only for a cause. Only when doing what he thought was right.

  And smelling it here and now told me everything I needed to know. He had gone on a bender that culminated in the destruction of this place.

  Which really worried me, because Penemue, in as much pain as he was, was never violent.

  Seeing this place so thoroughly destroyed gave me shivers. The Penemue I knew would never do something like this, no matter how upset he was. No matter how drunk.

  This destruction was something different. It was like he was giving up, embracing the hell he had condemned himself to. My only hope was that this carnage got whatever pent-up aggression he had out of him, that he was all out of destruction.

  Medusa bent over to pick up a piece of desk. “So much sadness,” she said. “So much rage.” But from the way her voice trailed off, I knew she wasn’t just talking about Penemue. She was talking about herself, too.

  The gorgon was one of the strongest people I’d ever met, but the person who stood in front of me was so broken that I couldn’t think of a way to fix her again. I suddenly found myself wishing I had some magical formula, something I could say or do that would make her whole again. Some key to unlock—

  “What happened to you?” Bella asked, her eyes trained on the bald gorgon.

  So, I guess we were going for the direct route.

  Medusa didn’t say anything, looking away.

  Bella approached Medusa, and with a gentle guiding hand on her chin, looked her in the eyes … the stone-turning, statue-making eyes. “Seriously, Jean here tells me you died. But here you are. What happened to you? How did you get here?”

  Medusa shook her head. “I don’t know.”

  “Come on, you must know something,” Bella said, her voice forceful, almost demanding. “And you’re not doing us any favors by holding back. In case you haven’t noticed, we’re in Hell and we need to get out. Anything you can tell us to help with that …” She let the words hang.

  The gorgon tried to look away and Bella did something I didn’t think she was capable of … she held Medusa’s chin so she couldn’t look away.

  “Bella,” I said, “you’re being too—”

  “No,” Bella said, lifting a silencing hand. “I need to know. We need to know. What happened? How the hell did you get to Hell?”

  “I … I …” Medusa started, pulling away. From the way Bella moved, I could see that she tried to keep her hold on the gorgon, but couldn’t.

  Marty hissed, crawling up Medusa’s arm and giving Bella a look that clearly, and in no uncertain terms, said, Back off, bitch.

  But Bella didn’t. “Come on! We need to know. How the fuck are you here?”

  “Bella,” Judith said, “please. Now is not the time.”

  “Now is exactly the time. Now is the only time. If you haven’t noticed, we’re stuck in now. And this … this Other knows shit we don’t. Now tell us, how did you get here?” Bella hand settled on Thor’s hammer like she was deciding whether or not to unsling the weapon and … what? Charge at Medusa?

  I didn’t know if this was some kind of jealous ploy or if Bella was overwhelmed by the stress of this place, but this was getting serious.

  “Bella,” I said, stepping between them, “stop this. Now. Whatever you’re trying to do, this isn’t the way.”

  “Oh look, Jean-Luc Matthias the hero. Stepping in to save the damsel in distress. Look at you.”

  “What?” I said, feeling a rage of my own coursing through me.

  “Big man. Trying to save the world, but can’t even keep his date alive. You couldn’t keep me alive. I died because of you. I died. I died. I died!” Fury flashed in Bella’s eyes as she grabbed the hammer’s hilt. She only needed to turn it around and it would be in her hands and—

  Medusa stepped between us, grabbing Bella’s forearms so she couldn’t move, and yelled, “You don’t touch him. He tried to save me. To save us all. That’s all he does.”

  “What does he do? Fail?” Bella said, trying to break free.

  I felt my own anger rush through me, and reaching for the two women, I sought to get between them. But before I was able to take two steps in their direction, I felt a kinetic blast shoot across the plane and push me back a dozen feet.

  Looking up, I saw Judith had used her poltergeist rage to push me back. I guess she may have lost her specter façade, but not her ghostly powers. “You don’t touch my little girl,” my mother-in-law screamed. “You don’t get to ever touch her again.”

  “You bitch.” I picked up a piece of rock and threw it at her. I was aiming for her head and if she hadn’t let out another blast of kinetic energy, I would have hit her square in the eyes.

  “Don’t you hurt my mother!” Bella broke away from Medusa and pulled out the hammer.

  Fine, I thought with spiteful rage, I guess it’s time to have a good ol’ family argument.

  Family Fights, Pain and (a Modicum) of Gain

  Without a second thought, I got to my feet and tackled Judith. I wanted to throw her down the friggin’ hill, smash her head into the cold, hard earth, feel my hands around her neck.

  But before I could wrap my fingers around her pudgy, wrinkled neck, a hand pulled me back. Turning, I saw that Bella had hoisted me off Judith. “You ungrateful bitch,” I spat. “You would pick her over me?”

  “I’d … I’d … I’d pick”—Bella looked around, her gaze settling on the splintered leg of one of the desks—“this piece of wood over you. At least this knows when to shut up.” She tossed it at me like a spear.

  “How dare you—” I started, but Bella wasn’t done, throwing Thor’s hammer at me. The flat part of its top smacked my chest like a cannonball and it took everything I had not to pass out from the pain.

  But unlike Thor’s hammer in the movies, the thing didn’t fly back to her hand. Instead, it lay before me like a … well, a big hammer lies on the ground.

  I picked it up, ready to smash Bella’s pretty little face with it, when Medusa quite literally beat me to the punch. She socked Bella in the side of the face with a balled fist. “You leave him alone.”

  Before the gorgon could cock her fist back for another blow, Judith jumped on Medusa’s back and—oh crap—bit her ear. My mother-in-law was getting all Mike Tyson on her. Go Judith!

  No wait, that’s not what I meant. Medusa was on my side.

  But Medusa left me. Just like Bella. They both left me, choosing death over me.

  Just like my mother.

  And PopPop …

  And everyone I’d ever loved.

  An incredible emptiness consumed my soul, and I had one prevailing thought running through my head over and over and over again.

  End my pain by first ending theirs.

  I was going to kill them all, and then I was going to kill myself.

  ↔

  Hoisting the hammer over my head, I slammed it down on the ground. I had expected the damn thing to emit a shockwave of energy that would send everyone flying.

  Instead, it just hit the earth with a heavy thud, sans shockwave or energy or any effect at all.

  That wasn’t entirely true. The three of them stopped fighting long enough to look at me with disgust before continuing to pummel each other.

  OK, so shock and awe wasn’t going to work.

  What about a good ol’-fashioned bludgeoning? Grabbing Thor’s hammer again, I formulated a plan: hit each one of them with the damn thing. So, not much of plan, but a plan nonetheless. The only question was who I should hit first.

  Just as I was about to play a quick game of Eeny, Meeny, Miny, Moe, I felt a sharp pain in my right calf. Looking down, I saw Marty had bit me. I stomped down on the serpent. “There’s a reason why the B
ible explicitly gives humans permission to crush serpents beneath our heel,” I said. “It’s because you guys are so … so …” But before I could say anything else, the world started to spin and I fell to the ground.

  So this was how I’d die … taken down by a devious, poisonous viper I’d thought was my friend. Figures. Friends—when they weren’t letting you down, they were trying to kill you.

  The last thing I saw from my horizontal position was Marty biting Bella, then Judith. Oh good, I thought. At least they’re going down, too.

  ↔

  But I didn’t die, as evidenced by the pounding headache I felt when I woke up only the GoneGods knew how much later.

  With a groan, I got myself somewhat vertical and saw that Marty had indeed knocked out Bella and Judith … and Medusa. All four of us were in various stages of head-throbbery, groaning as we found a way back to our feet.

  My head hurt, my stomach hurt … Hell, all of me hurt. But I wasn’t angry. Well, I was a little bit angry at Marty for biting me, but the homicidal rage that had consumed me minutes earlier was gone.

  And that’s when it hit me that I had almost killed the two people I loved most in the world … and Judith. I almost took Thor’s hammer and bludgeoned them to death, while fully planning to kill myself afterward.

  “What the … Ow.” I grabbed my head in pain at the effort of speaking. That’s when I realized that Marty had not only knocked us out, but also managed to drag us all down the hill. How strong was that viper?

  “Yeah,” Bella said, giving me that look she had when she was sorry but wasn’t quite ready to say it yet.

  Judith set two fingers at the bridge of her nose. “I wanted to kill you all.” Then, looking at me, added, “Not terribly unusual when it comes to you. But Bella …” She stopped as the thought of hurting her daughter flooded her with emotion.

  “Yeah,” I said, “I was right there with you.” I figured misery loved company, and me admitting that I also wanted to kill Bella would ease her guilt. But from the look Judith shot me, I realized that wasn’t the case. She just got angrier.

  “What happened?” Bella asked.

  “This place,” Medusa said. “That’s what happened.” The Queen of Gorgons’ eyes misted over as she held Marty lovingly in her arms, stroking the viper’s head like one would a cat … a hairless, scaly cat.

  “What do you mean?” Bella asked.

  Medusa looked up at Bella with apologetic eyes. “That place up there possesses the echoes of Penemue’s anger. Those echoes washed over us, amplifying our own anger—not the angel’s. I was angry at you for …” She paused, as if deciding whether to continue speaking before letting out a heavy sigh. With renewed resolve in her heart, she continued, “I was angry at you for having Jean’s heart. I was angry at Judith for protecting you. And I was angry at you …”—she looked at me, holding my gaze—“for not looking at me the way you look at her.”

  Yeah, it was all starting to make sense. This place fed off our bad feelings, bringing them to the surface and exaggerating them to epic proportions. But it had to be our own anger, our own miseries. Not someone else’s. If we simply felt Penemue’s rage at his students, that wouldn’t have had much impact. After all, we can only get so angry at things that just don’t matter as much to us …

  But our own angry? That was something that could really torture us and that’s exactly what happened. We all got angry at each other for reasons that, in some twisted way, made sense to us.

  Medusa at Bella, for having my heart.

  Judith at me, for having Bella.

  Bella at Medusa, out of misplaced jealousy.

  And finally, me at both Medusa and Bella, for leaving me. It didn’t matter why they left … all that mattered was that they did. And I wanted to kill them for it.

  I was embarrassed by my own feelings and where they took me, and I wanted Marty to bite me again—this time with some kind of amnesia-inducing venom.

  But that wasn’t going to happen and I would have to live on knowing that deep down within me, I resented them for dying.

  If only I could afford a shrink …

  No one spoke for a long time. We just sat, silent and distant as we wallowed in our own shame.

  I don’t know how long we would have stayed that way had Medusa not spoken again. “You were right to be angry with me, Bella,” she said. “But not for my time with Jean, as short as it was.”

  “I was never—” Bella started, but Medusa lifted a hand.

  “No, please. No more lies. No more hidden truths. You were angry, but you need not be. It’s you. It was always you.” Medusa sighed. “You know, as I breathed my last, part of me was relieved to be free of you. Free of these feeling that I knew would never be returned. I think that is why I so willing burnt so much time on the beach that day.

  “And when I finally turned to stone, I felt a sense of peace that I believed would be forever. I don’t know how long I was gone, but I heard a voice—a familiar one—say, ‘Perhaps I can undo some of the wrong that was done.’ And I felt the power pull me.

  “It pulled until I was here, lost and alone.”

  Looking at Medusa, whose chin struggled not to crumple, I knew that—even after everything she had endured, in life and in Hell—she was speaking from a true, vulnerable place. An incredible thing for anyone.

  Which was why I loved her, as well.

  Bella nodded. “That’s what I felt, too. But when I arrived here, I wasn’t lost, exactly. I was standing before an open portal, staring at you.” She smiled at me, and for a second, my head stopped hurting. Then she turned back to Medusa. “I arrived at the exact same moment that Jean did. But you … it looked like you’d been here for a while.”

  “I have. As best I can tell, it’s been months.”

  “How?”

  Medusa shook her head. “I don’t know. All I can say is that I had been lost in the forest, forced to forage and hunt. Because there was no sun to judge time by, I have no way to know. But given the number of meals I ate, the number of times I slept … months. Easily.”

  “Why?” I said. “Why would Penemue make it so that it felt like months to you and hardly any time for Bella? Even I followed Penemue no more than a few hours after he created this place. From that perspective, it must have felt like you were here far longer than even he was.”

  “Not necessarily,” Medusa said. “In terms of hours on Earth, it might have only been a handful, but time here … that could feel endless.”

  “Holy sh—”

  “Jean,” Judith said in a warning tone.

  “—Shredder on a skateboard,” I said. “Not only is Hell perpetually now, but time drags on here?”

  The gorgon shook her head. “I have never visited this domain before, but from what I know, time doesn’t progress here. It remains still. The rest of the universe moves forward, but this place does not.”

  “So, what? Earth, Heaven and every other place in this universe has time, but not Hell. How does that even work?”

  “Well, it is possible—”

  “You know what? I don’t need to know. It’ll just make this headache worse. What I really want to know is why he brought you here first, then me.”

  “I have something to say about that,” Judith said, lifting her hand like a kid at school. “I saw something that might make sense of all this.”

  ↔

  We all stared at Judith with a collective look of, What is it? that I like to think also carried with it a You didn’t think to mention this earlier? kind of vibe.

  She rolled her eyes. “I didn’t think it was important. Besides, I was distracted by my baby girl’s appearance.”

  “And?” I said, smug in the fact that I could be the judgmental one.

  Another eye roll. “I saw Penemue create the portal and close it, then open it again before closing it a third time. Each time the rip was tiny, a small crack in a curtain, if you will. But then the doorway was opened a third time and it was much bigger.
That’s when I got you. That’s when we saw Bella.”

  I stared at Judith as I mulled over the implications of what she’d just said. The portal opened and closed three times, which meant that Penemue could open and close it. All this time I thought that he was limited in what he could do, that he had opened it and stepped through, unable to close it behind him. But if he could open and close it at will and he had invited Bella and Medusa to Hell, leaving the door open for us to follow …

  “He wants us to save him,” I said.

  Bella nodded. “I think you’re right. This is his cry for help.”

  “Yeah.” I ran my hand through my hair. “Why couldn’t he binge-eat a tub of Häagen-Dazs like a normal person? I’d be right by his side then.”

  “You’re by his side now,” Bella said with genuine pride.

  She was right. I was in Hell, trying to save him. If that didn’t scream BFF, I didn’t know what would.

  “But,” Bella continued, “we have to get to him soon, because he might stop wanting our help.”

  “How so?” Judith asked.

  “Think about it. We got so angry at each other up there. Hell grabs you, manipulates your emotions. If he spends long enough in here, well, there might be no coming back from that.”

  “Hell is now and now is forever here,” I muttered, getting to my feet. “We better get moving. We have an angel to save and—” But I didn’t get to finish the thought.

  I heard Bella say, “What in the GoneGods is that?”

  Looking up, I saw a rolling darkness coming in from the horizon.

  I guess Penemue wasn’t done destroying after all.

  Rolling Darkness, Pinpricks of Light and All Hope Be Damned