The sensation of moving straight from the cold, barbed cave to somewhere somehow even colder is disorienting, to say the least. Not appearing in the lobby feels strange. Downright alien. Not that I’ll miss it, of course. However, the sight before me is well worthy of reconsidering my choice of wish.

…What the heck is this place?

Hell Difficulty Thirty-Second Floor:

Cocytus, step one: Caina.>

<[Clear Condition]

Move on.>

Before me, continuing on for what seems like eternity, is a frozen lake. The ice is black, and when I look down, I can’t see where the ice is supposed to end. I would assume that it’s been frozen all the way to the bottom, but I can’t see the bottom to confirm it. The ice continues endlessly beneath me, ahead of me, and also behind me. An unbound expanse of sheer black ice.

The sky is dark, too. I can’t say if there are clouds or not. However, there is a light fog blanketing the ice, visible just beyond the edge of my vision. Not thick enough to hide the fact that the ice goes on forever and ever, but enough to make any possible enemies briefly invisible.

I’d be able to smell them, though, so I should be…

My nose scrunches up.

What… the heck is that smell?

I begin moving. My feet, being just as cold as the ice, stick to it rather than sliding across them. Each step removes one more layer. Skin, fat, muscle… But it doesn’t matter. I keep moving. The smell tingles in my nose, harsher than the cold, more familiar than the smell of my own house. As the fog parts before me, silhouettes become visible in the ice. At first, I can only see their heads, poking out of the eye miserably. But then, as I come closer, their bodies are visible too, encased in the ice.

Goblins. Some adults, some children, most of them in bundles of three or more. Mother and father and child, their arms permanently frozen around the others in an eternal embrace. As I walk by them, their eyes turn to me, shining with black hatred. I heed them no mind. They don’t matter.

Only she does.

Beyond the fog stands a shadow. She smells like home. Even her silhouette is so, so familiar. The turn of her hair, the way she stands on the ice, the sway of her form…

I start running. My breath hisses through my throat. It’s her. She’s here. She—

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I rush into her arms.

“Mom,” I say, weakly.

Her arms fold around me. Warm. So much warmer than the air and the ice and the cold. I press my head against her chest. She smells like home. Like our house. My chest feels so tight it hurts. I can barely breathe. Still, I force myself to look up at her, hoping against hope that it’s a ruse, that I’m seeing things wrong, that the floor is throwing a cruel curveball at me and anytime now I’ll gain another level in hallucination protection.

She smiles down at me. “Did you get stronger, Lo?”

I blink the tears out of my eyes. “No,” I choke out. “I didn’t.”

“Well, I sure hope you’ve been eating enough. You look like a skeleton!” She wipes a strand of hair from my face, tucking it behind my ear. “How will I be able to bring you to the pageant now? Your hair is all greasy. Oh, look at your neck… Do you think you’ll still fit into your collar?”

“I’m not a dog, mom,” I say. “I don’t do dressage.”

“No, you’re right,” she says. “You’re too untrained to be led through those spooky tunnels, and too short to jump over the heights. You’d be terrible at it, wouldn’t you?”

“Yeah, I would.”

For a few moments, she looks down at me, her aged face wrinkled up at the eyes. “You’re being awfully huggy today. Any specific reason why?”

“No, not really.”

“You usually hate it when I hug you.”

“I know.”

She holds my cheek. “Did something happen?”

“Nothing in particular,” I croak.

“Liar. What did I tell you about lying?”

“I’m bad at it, so—”

“No use in lying to mom.” She smiles smugly. “Well? What’s going on?”

“Mom…” I hold her slightly tighter. What is her. What isn’t really her. “Do you know where we are right now?”

“Where we…?” Hands clasped around my back, she looks up and around. Nothing seems to strike her as unusual. She looks the same as she always has been. “We’re at home, aren’t we?”

I press my face closer to her. She’s wearing a red T-shirt with horses on it. It’s faded, and the print has started to wear. I’ve seen her wear that same T-shirt ever since I was a kid. It’s probably older than I am. “Yeah,” I say. “We are.”

She pats my back. “Leave it to little Lo to act weird out of the blue. When are you planning on growing up? If you don’t eat your greens, you’ll be stuck like this forever, you know. Don’t you think it’s a little odd for a son to be shorter than his mother? You need to grow big and strong, so you can get good work, and…”

I zone out. She’s talking, and I’m listening, but it’s not really registering. How many times has she told the same speech, listing the same faults? Every time, she told it in different tones. I never really thought about it that much back then. At that time, her spiels were just annoying. Another long-winded monologue about how I’m a sucky kid and a failure of a son and if I could only be a bit more like my sister, then I’d do so much better and wouldn’t mope around in my room all the time.

But only now am I really listening to her. Not what she’s saying, but rather what she’s intending.

‘I hope you become a son I can be proud of.’

‘I hope you get better.’

‘I hope you become a brother equal to your sister.’

‘I hope you live a good life, even when I’m no longer there to help you.’

‘I love you.’

“I love you too, Mom.”

She pauses her speech. Sighing, she pats my head. When I look up to her again, she’s smiling. Her eyes shine sympathetically. “Look at you. All grown up, so quickly. The years just ran us by, didn’t they?” Humming a familiar melody, one of the lullabies she used to sing, she presses me closer. “You’ve been through a lot, haven’t you?”

“Yeah,” I say. “I—I have.”

“Did it hurt?”

“It did,” I say, trembling in her arms. I feel like a little kid again, running to mom because I fell and scratched my knee. “It—it really hurt. And… I hurt people. I hurt a lot of people. I didn’t want to… I didn’t mean to… But I still did. And I don’t know where to go from here.”

“Have you tried saying sorry?”

I look up at her. She’s grinning down at me. I chuckle bitterly. “You suck at giving advice, Mom.”

“I know, I know,” she replies. “But…” She holds me a little tighter, putting her chin on top of my head. “I’m pretty good at giving hugs though, aren’t I?”

“Yeah,” I mutter into her chest. “You are.”

She holds me for a while. I cry into her faded shirt, and she hums to me, her song joining with the wind. Sometimes, I stop crying, only to start back up a little while later. She doesn’t mind. She strokes my back and my hair, muttering about how I need to keep my back straight and keep my hair washed. She tells me that I’d be so handsome if I only put on a little weight. She tells me, without saying it at all, that she loves me more than anything.

And in the end, I’m not crying anymore. I’m breathing, slowly, gently. If only I could fall asleep in her arms, she could stay a bit longer. If only I hadn’t done what I did… I would never have had to leave to begin with.

“Are you ready to let me go?”

I look up at her face. At her gently smiling, lightly wrinkled face, aged by worries and woes. I swallow down another sob. “Yeah,” I say. “I’m ready.”

“Good. I love you, Lo. Don’t ever forget that.”

She kisses my forehead.

“I love you too.”

Then, she turns to snow, and disappears with the wind—her humming echoing across the ice.

“Goodbye, Mom.”