Hell and Back

by Patricia Blackmoor

  Looking around, no one else looked injured, so it probably wasn’t an ER. If it was, I would have expected Mitchell or Courtney to be here with me. Instead, I was alone, with only the little old man sitting to my right.

  Most of the people in my field of view were older, wrinkled and gray men and women. A few of them were middle-aged, a few in their twenties like me. I saw three teenagers. In the area I sat there was one child, a little girl with dark braids. If I had to guess, she was maybe six or seven.

  Where the hell was I?

  I took a deep breath, tightening my grip on the arm rests of my chair. Perhaps I should have gotten nervous earlier, but I had been in so much shock. Now the alarm was starting to set in. Everyone was so stoic, looking down at their hands. No one was talking. No one was reading the outdated magazines. No one was doing anything.

  I turned to the old man sitting next to me. “Hey, do you know what’s going on?” I asked him.

  He didn’t respond, didn’t even blink. I tried again a little louder. “Hey, what’s going on here?”

  Still no answer. Maybe he was deaf. With his age, that was certainly possible. I waved a hand in front of his face. “Hey, mister.”

  He still didn’t answer me. “What’s your problem?” I asked him louder. “You alive over there?”

  The man continued to stare down at his hands.

  “Asshole,” I muttered, crossing my arms and leaning back in my seat. I looked around the room; there was a woman behind me.

  “Ma’am?” I said. “Ma’am, can you tell me what’s going on? Where we are?”

  She continued to stare straight down at her hands.

  I turned back around and looked at the little girl sitting across from me. I was starting to get twitchy, anxious in this silent room. It shouldn’t be silent; that was wrong. So many people together had to make noise, even a little. The sounds of shuffling in the seats, someone’s wristwatch, the tapping on a phone. But no one was shifting, no one had a watch, and no one was on their phones. I felt in my pockets. I didn’t have mine with me. Last I remembered, I’d stuck it in the cupholder in the car. But what the hell had happened after that?

  I turned to the girl across from me. “Hey, what’s going on?” I asked her. But just like the others, she only continued to stare at her hands, unmoving.

  “Seriously? Is this some twisted joke?” I asked. “What’s going on here?”

  She still didn’t move. Annoyed, frustrated, I stood up from my seat.

  “Hello?” I called out. “Can anyone hear me? Hello? What’s going on here? Where are we?”

  Not a single person moved, nor shifted at all. Everyone stayed still like a statue, staring down at their hands. It was terrifying.

  I stormed down the aisle between chairs. “Hello? Hello? Someone? Anyone? Are you listening? Where am I? What’s going on?”

  Everyone continued to sit frozen. My heart raced as I looked around at the immobile expanse of people, the room that never seemed to end, the bright lights and the plastic chairs.

  “Hello?” I called out again. “Hello? Anyone? Pay attention! Pay attention to me! Someone answer!”

  No one responded. “Fine, if you’re going to ignore me, then I’ll make you pay attention,” I said, pacing up and down. I knelt in front of the little girl. “Hey! You! Listen to me!”

  She didn’t even blink. She was alive, she was breathing, but she did nothing else to indicate any sort of function.

  “Pay attention!” I called out. I moved down the row to a man about my age, with red hair and freckles. “Hey, you, you there?”

  Like with the others, he didn’t move.

  “What if I did this?” I asked, pulling at the hem of my shirt, raising my arms to lift it over my head.

  “Put your shirt down, Miss Cross,” said a voice, and I whirled around.

  “You can see me?”

  “Yes, I can see you,” said the woman. She looked like a Victoria’s Secret Angel dressed in office clothes, long blonde hair pulled into a high bun, tall and curved frame clad in a suit jacket and skirt combo, all in black. A Victoria’s Secret model turned business woman going to a funeral.

  And she was annoyed. Her arms were crossed. “Please return to your seat.”

  I crossed my arms in return. “Tell me what’s going on. Why is everyone ignoring me?”

  “They aren’t ignoring you,” she said, raising a perfect eyebrow. “They can’t see you.”

  “What do you mean they can’t see me? I can see them.”

  “You see them as we want you to see them,” she said. “Every person here is in a slightly different reality of their own. In their reality, you’re sitting quietly in your seat, staring down at your lap.”

  “Why?” I asked. “I don’t understand.”

  “Miss Cross, please sit down,” she said again.

  I looked around the room, the deathly quiet room, each person with shoulders back, staring down at their hands. Did I look that stupid in their reality, sitting there like a scolded Catholic schoolgirl?

  “Please tell me what’s going on,” I said, dropping my voice. “I’m confused. I don’t understand.”

  “I told you. You’re each in your own reality.”

  “That doesn’t explain anything,” I said.

  She rubbed at her temple. “Ugh, I’m not even supposed to be here today. This is supposed to be Sariel’s job.”

  I crossed my arms as I gazed at her. “I’m sorry you don’t want to be here, but I’m on the verge of a full-blown panic attack. I don’t know where I am, I don’t know how I got here, and I don’t know what I’m doing here. Can you please give me some answers?”

  She sighed. “You’ll get answers, I promise, as soon as your name is called.”

  “And when will that be?”

  She shrugged. “I don’t know.”

  “Well, where am I in line?”

  “I don’t know.”

  I stared at her.

  “Miss Cross, over one hundred people die every minute. We can only do so much.”

  My eyes got wide. “I’m dead?”

  Her shoulders fell. “Shit.”

  “I’m dead.”

  “Yes.”

  I felt like the air had been kicked out of my lungs. I struggled for a breath, unable to meet her eyes.

  “I’m sorry,” she said. “This isn’t what I’m good at. I’m not usually in this department. As soon as your name gets called, your caseworker will explain everything.”

  “Caseworker?” I sat back in my seat. “God, this is hell.”

  “I can neither confirm nor deny that.”

  “Of course you can’t,” I said, leaning back with my arms pulled tight against my chest.

  She looked at me for a moment. “All right, well, I’ve got other people to calm down. You’re good?”

  I looked at her. “I’m dead.”

  She shifted on her feet. “I’m sorry. I’ve got to go.”

  With that, she was gone, and I was left sitting, shell-shocked in my seat.

  I don’t know how much time passed between her leaving and my name being called. With no clocks, I had no way to measure time. I tried counting, but I was easily distracted and lost count. It felt like hours and hours, maybe the equivalent of days. I tried to doze off in my seat, but couldn’t. I thought I’d be hungry, but I wasn’t. I thought I’d have to use the bathroom, but I didn’t. All part of the perks of being dead, I supposed.

  I cried. I tried not to, but I couldn’t help it. There was so much I hadn’t accomplished, so many things left unfinished. I’d had dreams of moving to California with Mitchell. I was going to spend my days out in the sunshine, lounging by the pool. That would never happen.

  I’d never be a mother. Never have children. I hadn’t even realized I wanted any until now. I would never get to hold my own infant in my hands.

  I’d never have a real career. Never buy a house. Never go to Paris or Rome or Athens. My life was over, and while I had no idea wha
t was coming next, it couldn’t be good. Not after all of this.

  “Megan Cross?”

  I looked up to see another woman, slightly older than the mourning Victoria’s Secret businesswoman. She was similarly dressed, in black, with a pantsuit instead of a skirt. Her hair was darker, pulled into a low bun at the nape of her neck. I tried to read her face, but she kept her expression neutral. With a deep breath, I stood up and crossed the room to where she was waiting by the door.

  “Please come in,” she said, motioning to the door. I had expected a hallway, but instead the door only led to a small office. The office was nearly barren: two chairs separated by a desk. The desk was bare, nothing on top of it. To the left was another door, with a man clad in black. He didn’t wear office attire like the woman. His clothes were more tactical, but he didn’t have any weapons that I could see.

  “Sit down, Miss Cross,” the woman said, gesturing to the chair nearest me. I took a seat.

  “I don’t know what to call you,” I said.

  “It doesn’t matter,” she told me, sitting down. “We won’t meet again.”

  I only nodded.

  “Before we begin, I need to confirm to personal information. You are Megan Anne Cross?”

  “Yes.”

  “Daughter of Susan and Kenneth Cross?”

  “Yes.”

  “Twenty-six years old?”

  “Yes.” My twenty-seventh was supposed to be two months away. I’d be forever twenty-six.

  “All right,” she said, nodding. She had no papers or computer in front of her. Did she have all of this memorized? For everyone? “Now, Miss Cross, our records indicate that you consider yourself to be a part of the Christian religion?”

  “I mean, I was raised that way, but I guess I’m more agnostic now.”

  “Agnostic isn’t an option,” the woman said. “I can mark you down as Christian or atheist.”

  “Um, Christian, I guess.”

  “Great.” It seemed like if she’d had papers, she would have stacked them and made them orderly, but she didn’t, so she only gestured to the door. “You’ll be going through door seven on the left.”

  “Um, can I ask you a question?”

  “I suppose.”

  “How did I die? I don’t remember dying.”

  “Your death was instantaneous.”

  “Okay, but how did I die?”

  “I don’t have that information.”

  I nodded. “Okay. Where am I going? What’s behind door seven?”

  “I’m not able to discuss that with you.”

  “So you’re expecting me to just blindly go there, without knowing what I’m walking into?”

  “If you’re unwilling to go of your own volition, we can have someone take you there.” She glanced at the guard by the door. “Trust me, you won’t be able to get away if that’s the path you take.”

  I put my arms up, letting her know that I wasn’t going to try anything foolish. “I’ll go willingly.”

  She gave me a tight smile. “Good. You may leave now.”

  Rude. So, so rude. I was almost relieved to leave that office. I had no idea what I was walking into, but at least I wasn’t stuck in that little room with a woman who clearly didn’t care about me.

  The guard opened the door for me and I stepped past him into a bright hallway. The fluorescent lights flickered above me, the sort of lighting you’d find in a B horror movie. The floor and the walls were concrete, my footsteps echoing as I tried to gather my bearings. The office I’d stepped from was at one end of the long hallway dotted with dozens of metal doors.

  I looked around with uncertainty. Each door was guarded by a man or woman in black, dressed in the same type of tactical clothes as the man in the room. They turned their attention to me as I stepped out, and I swallowed at their gaze.

  Terror seized my heart with each step. My heart thundered, and I struggled to take in air as I walked. I was ready to cry, and I was so afraid that I thought I might pass out. I was almost sure that at any moment, the emotions and fear would take over and I’d be out cold on the floor of the hallway.

  I swallowed, balling my hands into fists at my side. I passed doors one and two, the guards’ eyes following me. I thought that perhaps passing by the doors would give me a clue as to what I was in for, but the doors were a thick metal and I couldn’t see inside, nor could I hear anything. I was going in completely blind.

  I came to a stop outside door seven, and the guard nodded at me. He pushed the door open as my heart thundered. I took a deep breath. The door swung open.

  This was hell.

  Chapter Two

  I screamed. I tried to run. All I could see through that door was hell, literal hell.

  Heat radiated from the doorway. A hot heat, dry heat that seared my skin, like opening a preheated oven. Weather sometimes hovered around a hundred in the summer, but this was more than that, so much more. It prickled my skin, flushing it red. The air burned my lungs as I began to hyperventilate, my head beginning to get light. I had never felt a heat like that before, so scalding, so brutal.

  The hot air carried a smell with it, a sharp, nauseating scent of sulfur. Like the worst rotten egg, like a gas leak, so strong it choked me. If I had been able to breathe, it surely would have made me dizzy, but as it was it vaguely registered as I coughed and sputtered, trying to back away from the door. The scent made my head pound and I thought I might vomit as I pressed the palms of my hands into my knees, blinking against the heat, trying to find some form of reality in this strange place.

  With the door open, the whole hallway had filled with screams, loud and shrieking, echoing off the cement walls. The sound of thousands of souls in agony, in pain, stuck in the pit forever, vibrating through my bones. The screams pierced through my body, my mind, shaking me to the core. I flexed my hands, balling them into fists, my nails digging into my palms, trying to stifle tears. The sounds, the smoke, the heat, all of it was working together to tear me apart from my head down through my entire body. How could I go in there? How could I spend the rest of eternity in there?

  The heat, the stench, the screams… those weren’t even the worst part. The worst part was what I could see, or rather, what I couldn’t see inside of the door. Almost everything was black, dark, like an opened closet door. It wasn’t completely black though; it was the shade of black that wasn’t pitch but still revealed darker shadows. In the center of the room came an orange glow from somewhere down below. I didn’t have to see it to know it was the source of the heat, fire or magma or something meant to torment and torture.

  Because things were dark, it was hard to see completely, even with the orange glow. From what I could see, the room looked round, but it was hard to tell in the dim light. The structures inside seemed to be made of rock or stone, the whole room carved out of it. In the darkness, black shadows flitted around the hole, moving too quickly to make out their shapes. They danced through the darkness, and those shadows gave me the most dreaded feeling of all. Some of them were thin, some huge, all of them terrifying. I didn’t know what they were, but I knew that if I got too close, they’d hurt me.

  I gasped in a breath and turned around, racing as far away from door number seven as I could, stumbling back toward the office. The moment I stepped away from the door the guards sprang into action, no longer stoic. I swerved to avoid being grabbed, rushing with everything in me back toward the office door. I couldn’t remember having run that fast in my life, desperate to reach that door and break free of the hallway. My heart pounded in my chest as I threw myself against the door.

  There was no doorknob on this side, no handle, no way to open the door. I threw myself against it once, twice.

  “Help!” I cried out. “Please, help me! Get me out of here!”

  I pounded my fists against the metal, the sound echoing through the hallway. Pain shot through my fists and arms, but it scarcely registered with all the terror surging through my body. I kept pounding.

 
; “Let me out! Please! Let me out! I need to get out of here, please, open the door. Let me out!”

  No one answered. Things were quiet. I turned around in the hallway, my cheeks wet with tears. Three guards stood blocking me.

  “Come on, miss,” one of them said. “Let’s go.”

  I sank down to the floor, sniffling and crying. “No. Please. Please don’t make me go in there.”

  “You don’t have a choice.”

  “Please. Please don’t make me go. Please. I wasn’t that bad of a person.”

  “That’s not for us to decide. Get up.”

  “Please,” I said again. “Please.”

  “All right,” one said with a sigh. “I’m not waiting any longer.”

  He stepped toward me and grabbed my arm, but I pulled back, throwing myself against the door.

  “Come on. Time to face your consequences,” he said.

  “No. Please, please, don’t make me go in there. Please.”

  He sighed. “Come on. We can do this for centuries if you want.”

  “Fine. I’d rather be here than in there.”

  “I wasn’t serious. We can’t really do this for centuries. We have other souls waiting.” He motioned to one of the other guards, a sturdily built woman, and the two of them came on either side of me and grabbed my arms.

  I wasn’t going quietly. I struggled in their arms, trying to twist, pull free, anything I could do to inconvenience them so they’d have to let me go.

  “Stop it!” said the woman.

  I refused. I lashed out with my foot, kicking her in the leg. It was like connecting with steel, and didn’t faze her at all. She only raised an eyebrow at me.

  “You’ll only hurt yourself by doing that,” she said.

  “Please,” I said, resorting to begging yet again. “Please don’t make me do this.”

  “Let’s go,” she told the man.

  “No, no,” I said, going limp in their arms, forcing them to drag me, tennis shoes scraping the floor.