Hell and Back

by Patricia Blackmoor

  I looked down at my hands, where they were in my crossed lap. “Not rough, really. I was privileged. My parents were middle class. But I never got on well with my other classmates. Other girls didn’t like me much. They made my life hell.”

  “That’s never easy.”

  “I was awkward,” I said with a sigh. “I mean, I can’t really blame them. I was weird. Read a lot of books. Watched a lot of TV. I preferred fantasy to reality.”

  “I get it,” he said. “I was a quieter kid. I played sports and stuff, but I always preferred reading.”

  “Stephen King was always a favorite of mine,” I sighed. “Never thought I’d end up basically living in one of his novels.”

  “I know, right? Although I always preferred fantasy novels myself.”

  “Fantasy? I read Harry Potter.”

  “We all read Harry Potter.”

  “Yeah, but I didn’t read it until I was sixteen.”

  “Sixteen? How is that possible?”

  “My parents were against it. My dad thought J.K. Rowling practiced witchcraft. I wasn’t able to read it until I was babysitting one night for a couple that had the books. Finished the first in just a few hours.”

  “That’s impressive.”

  “Once, I checked seventy-seven books out of the library.”

  “Now that’s impressive. Did you read them all?”

  “I don’t remember. I think so.”

  “I read too,” he said. “But once my parents died, I had a lot less time. I can’t remember the last time I finished a book. It’s one of my regrets.”

  “Does it help?”

  “What?”

  “Regretting.”

  He shrugged. “Not really. I try not to, but it’s hard. I keep thinking, I wish I’d spent more time with my brothers and sisters. I wish I’d read more. I wish I’d gotten to go to Rome.”

  “I’ve always wanted to go to Rome,” I sighed. “Italy has always fascinated me.”

  “Me too.”

  “There isn’t a way out of here, is there?” I asked, sighing.

  “Not that I know of. And trust me, I’ve looked. The only demons allowed up on the surface are those sent to cause chaos or sent to make deals.”

  “Chaos?”

  “How do you think the 2016 election happened?”

  I nodded. “I see. But there’s no...back door? No escape hatch?”

  “Not that I know of.”

  I picked at the dirt and soot on the ground. “I need to get out of here.”

  “I understand how you feel.”

  “You don’t, though!” I said, raising my voice more than I meant to. “I have money, and I need to get it to Mitchell…”

  “Who’s Mitchell?”

  “My boyfriend,” I said. “Or he was my boyfriend.”

  “If you left money for him, I’m sure he’s got it.”

  “It’s not like that,” I sighed.

  “I guess I don’t understand.”

  “I...I’m not a good person, Parker,” I said.

  “I mean, you are in hell.”

  “Mitchell and our friend Courtney and I, we robbed a bank. A few banks, actually.”

  “Wow, that’s—”

  “Terrible, I know.”

  “I was actually going to say it’s sort of impressive.”

  “It was their idea, but I followed along. We hit banks that were bad, you know, the ones that had been in the news, had fucked up the stock market and bankrupted people, the ones that got bailouts instead of prison time. I was convinced that we were just getting them back. All I did was wait in the car; I was the getaway driver, but that must have been enough to get me into hell.”

  “Nah,” he said. “I’m sure you did more than that.”

  “I don’t know. I was always an okay sort of person. I mean, I never volunteered anywhere, but I donated stuff to Goodwill.”

  “They pay their disabled staff pennies on the dollar.”

  “Well, I gave coins to the Salvation Army bell ringers at Christmas time.”

  “They discriminate against the LGBTQ community.”

  “Well, shit,” I sighed. “I guess I was a bitch.”

  “Don’t use that word,” he said, shifting where he sat. “I don’t like it.”

  “All right. Well, whatever I did in life got me here. I honestly didn’t think that robbing those evil banks was all that bad, in the end.”

  “You probably terrified a lot of people. Bank tellers.”

  “That’s true. I never really thought of it that way.”

  “Sometimes, our actions have unintended consequences.”

  “You’ve got that right,” I said. “That’s the problem. I was worried the police were on to us, so I took the money and buried it in the backyard. I never told them. I figured I’d get it back out once we were in the clear. But now they’re expecting the money to be in a safe in our bedroom, but it’s not there. They won’t know where it is. I have to get back to Earth, I have to get them the money.”

  He turned around, and hearing him shift I followed suit so we were face-to-face across the bars.

  “Meg, my family is still out there, without me to care for them. My sister is only eighteen and she’s being forced to look after my younger brothers. I set aside as much money as possible to take care of them, but like I said, she’s only eighteen. She shouldn’t be a mother now, she shouldn’t have to take care of young boys. My brothers are ten and twelve. They’ve always been a handful, but as pre-teens, they’re especially difficult. She doesn’t know how to raise teenage boys. Hell, I don’t either, and I was one. And despite all of this, despite having family who needs me, despite me having a good reason for selling my soul, despite the desperation and pain that I’ve been through, they won’t let me go to the surface. They won’t let me be reunited with my family, won’t let me take care of my family.”

  The pain in his eyes was obvious, and I was almost sure that if he could cry, he would. “So if they won’t let me take care of my family, what makes you think they would let you go back to Earth to help your boyfriend find his stolen money?”

  I swallowed. I’d be crying if I could. “I get it,” I said. “You’re better than me. You led a perfect life. You’re only here because you sacrificed your life for your siblings. I get it. But that doesn’t mean that I can’t want to get out!”

  He put his hands up. “You’re right. You’re right. I’m sorry.”

  “I was a fuckup.”

  “No. I’m sorry. I shouldn’t have yelled at you.”

  I grasped the bars of the cell, looking deep into his eyes. “So what if we worked together?”

  “I don’t follow you.”

  “You help me, I help you,” I said.

  “Still not following.”

  “You have more freedom than I do, right?”

  “In a way, but I already explained, that’s how they torture me—”

  “No, I know, I get that,” I said. “But you have the ability to wander around, check everywhere for a way out. You can talk to other demons, talk to other guards. You can find out something.”

  “Do you think I haven’t tried that?”

  “Please, Parker,” I said. I moved to touch his hands, but of course, we couldn’t actually touch. “Don’t you want to feel the wind? The sun on your face? The feeling of another person’s touch, a warm touch, a kind touch?”

  “Of course I want that,” he said.

  “So, we need to find a way out. A way to transport us back to Earth.”

  He sat back on his heels. “I don’t even know if that’s possible, if there is a way.”

  “You said some demons can go to Earth, right?”

  “Yeah, demons, not humans,” he said.

  “Think about your siblings, how happy they would be to see you again.”

  “They’d probably go into shock.”

  I laughed. “Maybe. But none of that matters if we can’t even get to Earth, right?”

  “I supp
ose not.”

  I bit my lip. “So, are you in?”

  “I’m in.”

  “You look for a way out, and I’ll figure out the logistics. It’s what I’m good at.”

  “Those bank robbery skills coming into use?”

  “Only this time, we’re breaking out, not in.”

  He gave me a smile. I hadn’t seen him smile much since he’d started coming to my cell.

  “How much time do you think has passed up there?” I asked. “Is Earth even above us?”

  “I’ve heard it described as a parallel universe,” he said.

  “Like in the reception room?”

  “I don’t know. I guess so. Remember, I didn’t go through there.”

  “So, what happened? You just appeared here?”

  “I knew when they were going to take me. Seven years after we’d made the deal. I had the date marked in the calendar. I let my brothers skip school. We spent the day together, we all went to the zoo, got ice cream. That night, I left the house and went to a nearby park. I waited there until the demons came to get me. They dragged me down through a portal of sorts; I don’t really remember. It was sort of a whooshing feeling, then heat. Burning heat. I was in a room with some of the other men who would become guards. We were placed in our own neighborhoods, with people who we might know. That was the point, to have connections and to create connections. That way when we had to bring them in for torture it would hurt that much more.”

  “That’s shitty.”

  “It’s smart, in a way. They know what our deepest pain is. Mine is watching people I care about be hurt.”

  “That’s why you made the deal,” I said. “Because you didn’t want to see your brothers and sister get hurt.”

  “They’re using it against me.”

  “What are their names?”

  “My brothers and sister?”

  “Yeah.”

  “Well, Hope is eighteen.”

  “That’s a big age gap,” I said.

  “Between me and Hope? Yeah. Different fathers. My mother was really young when she had me. It’s...not a pretty story. I never knew my real father, which is a good thing, in my opinion. Eventually, my mother found someone who really made her happy. That where my brothers and sister came from. Hope, then AJ, who’s twelve, and Avery, who’s ten. Avery doesn’t remember my parents at all, which is heartbreaking in and of itself.”

  “How did your parents die? You don’t have to share if you don’t want to.”

  “Car accident. Drunk driver.”

  “That’s terrible.”

  “Changed my life forever, that’s for sure. We never had a lot of money. We had enough to get by, but they hadn’t really put anything away, didn’t have life insurance. When they died, I was the only one working. I’d already gotten a job by then. I’d moved out too, was going to school. Then, of course, the accident happened. I moved back home. Quit school. Picked up a second then a third job to keep us afloat. I didn’t have a choice. Not much out there for an ungraduated student with three kids to raise. Everything I found paid minimum wage or slightly better. I did what I had to do until I was able to make that deal.”

  “What happened after you made the deal?” I asked.

  “One of the jobs I was working at, a tech job, gave me a promotion and a raise. I was able to quit my other two jobs and work full time from home with a good salary and full benefits. I did well, but it wasn’t a job that I would have been able to get without help. That deal saved my life and my siblings’ lives. I was able to put money away, and have a life insurance policy. My sister shouldn’t have to work to provide for my brothers for a few years.”

  “I understand why you did it,” I said. “But doesn’t that make you want to go back and see them even more?”

  “Yeah,” he said, nodding. “It does. At the very least, I want to make sure they’re okay.”

  “Parker!”

  Once more, someone was calling him away. Parker climbed to his feet, and so did I.

  “I’ll find out whatever I can,” he said.

  I nodded.

  Parker left to drag another soul to torture.

  Chapter Six

  I lay on my back with my knees up, since I couldn’t lie flat on the floor. My eyes were closed, hands resting with my fingers laced over my stomach. I wasn’t asleep, since I couldn’t sleep, but I lingered in a sort of limbo. It was the only way I had found to make time pass faster. Out of all the things that I had thought of when I imagined hell, I had never dreamed that the worst part would be the boredom. Of course, I hadn’t been tortured yet, but so far, the boredom was the worst. If I’d had all this free time while I was alive, I could think of a million things I’d want to do.

  Maybe I’d be lying on my couch, reading a book. Reading was something I hadn’t had time for in ages. I’d stretch out, a thriller or mystery or romance in my hands. Maybe I’d lie back in bed, my laptop over my thighs, and binge-watch some Netflix. Or I’d bake. I hadn’t done that in a long time. I loved to cook, but I hadn’t done it much lately; Courtney and Mitchell always wanted to order in, even with our tight, student-loan riddled budgets. Maybe I’d take a vacation with the money we’d stolen. Of course, if we hadn’t stolen the money, I probably wouldn’t be here in the first place.

  I adjusted my position, lying diagonally in the cell, trying to stretch my legs out a little bit more, but it still wasn’t enough. My back hurt. I was frustrated that this cell was too small. I knew that was the point, but that knowledge only served to annoy me further. Irritated, I pushed myself up and leaned my back against the wall of the cell. My shirt, once black, was now an ugly gray color.

  “How’s it going?”

  I turned to see Parker strolling toward me. How long had it been since I’d seen him? It felt like days, but, of course, the Earth didn’t revolve around the sun here, so days didn’t really exist.

  “Hey,” I said, turning to face him. “Tell me something happy, before I punch a wall.”

  “We’re in hell,” he reminded me, sitting down on the ground across the bars from me. “There isn’t much happiness here.”

  “There has to be something.”

  “That’s the point. No happiness, no relief. Just endless eternity of boredom and pain.”

  “You’re not in a very good mood today either,” I observed.

  “Again, hell.”

  I was downright miserable, but I didn’t like seeing him that way. I took a deep breath and tried to cheer him up a little bit. “Tell me what’s going on.”

  He shrugged. “Lots of people being dragged to the pit recently. It takes its toll.”

  “I’m sorry. I know that’s not easy.”

  He nodded. Once more I suspected that if he could have teared up, he would have been.

  “Then tell me something happy,” I said.

  “I told you, happiness doesn’t exist here.”

  “Well then, tell me something happy about before you came here. Tell me about your brothers and sister.”

  “I told you about them.”

  “You told me their ages, that’s it. But tell me about them.”

  He nodded. “Okay. Well, Hope is eighteen, like I told you. She’s so smart...incredibly smart. She was accepted into seven of the eight Ivy League schools. I couldn’t find it in my heart to persuade her to go to the local university instead. She was so excited. In hindsight, maybe I should have. She decided to go to Harvard, but she’s not going to be able to do that now.”

  “That’s still incredible, though,” I said. “Maybe she can take a gap year, find some family to watch your brothers during the school year next year?”

  “We don’t have family,” he said, sighing. “That’s why I took care of them all. Not that I’d have just passed them off...but a little help, from someone with more money, and I wouldn’t be here.”

  “This conversation wasn’t supposed to take a dark turn,” I said.

  “Sorry. I love them, but sometimes it hurts to
think about them.”

  I reached through the bars, intending to grab his hand, but of course, I couldn’t. Instead, I pulled it back. I shifted my body so my legs were crossed and I was looking straight at him. “Your brothers, what were their names?”

  “AJ and Avery. AJ is twelve, Avery is ten.”

  “So Avery was…” I did the math. “Three when your parents died?”

  Parker nodded. “He didn’t understand. He kept asking for them. It broke my heart. Then, one day, he just…stopped. He knew they weren’t coming back.”

  “That can’t have been easy,” I said. I was trying to cheer him up, but this wasn’t working. “I bet they were trouble.”

  “What is that supposed to mean?”

  I shrugged. “Two boys, that close in age...I just imagine they were mischievous.”

  “Oh,” Parker said. He chuckled. “Sorry. Where I’m from, ‘trouble’ means something a little different. The two of them are best friends, and yeah, they can be trouble. They loved pranks—and I always hated them.”

  “You don’t sound like a very fun big brother,” I said with a teasing smile.

  “Pranks are mean! The whole point is to humiliate someone else. When they were younger, Hope and I were their targets, but as they got older they started having prank wars against each other. The amount of shaving cream I cleaned up…” For once, Parker actually smiled.

  “God, I can imagine,” I laughed. “I used to pull little pranks on my sisters, harmless things, like short-sheeting their beds. I always got yelled at.”

  “Really? That’s not so bad.”

  “I know, but my mom would get mad because she didn’t want to make the bed all over again, so I stopped doing it. It was my way of having fun, bringing some levity into the house. Clearly, it didn’t work so well.”

  “You had kind of a rough family life, didn’t you?” he asked. “I overheard a little bit of what the demon was saying.”

  I looked down at my hands. “It’s hard to say I had a rough childhood. I mean, we never went on vacations, or went to Disney World, but we always had food on the table and a house to live in. We had cable.”

  “But?”

  “But…” I sighed. “My parents didn’t like each other much. There was a lot of yelling, which was very stressful. Because of that, my sisters and I didn’t get along. So there was always a lot of tension. I don’t know. If I could go back in time and do it differently, maybe I would. Treat them better, protect them from my parents. But I didn’t know how because I didn’t have a good example, and in middle school I was dealing with depression that my parents refused to acknowledge.”