1

I stand in darkness, struggling to inhale the hot, heavy air. I have no idea where I am or how I got here. My mind is a jumbled mess.

I hear the shuffling of feet nearby. I am not alone. I hear the rapid breaths of a passer-by. Someone brushes against me and cries out in alarm. As I fumble in the darkness, my fingers graze skin covered in cold sweat. I flinch in shock.

Behind me, men and women call out to each other. They ask questions and call names, their words echoing like tomb whispers.

Sweat runs down my spine, and I feel hot stone beneath my feet. I realize I’m naked.

The voices continue to increase and grow louder. I try to assemble my thoughts, but I can only remember that it was dawn and I was on my way home.

Someone grips my bicep, and a voice screams directly into my face. “Jane?!” the voice cries, but no one named Jane responds.

Memories begin to flood back. I remember the pain. The sirens and lights in the murky morning. The operating room where they told me to count from one hundred down to zero. I made it to ninety-eight.

Something creaks. An orange rectangle expands on the ground. Hot air rushes in with the light, as if we’d opened a furnace door. The squeaky gates lift, and other people appear around me, all facing away from me, toward the exit. A young woman turns back to look into the darkness, her eyes wide with fear. We cough. The gates disappear into the ceiling. We squint, and some people shout in the direction of the light. Their words are lost in the roar of fire.

We are in a cave, not a tunnel. The bright, flickering flames dance on the sharp walls, creating long shadows.

“Where are we?” shouts an old man.

Hesitantly, the people nearest the exit onward start passing through it. I stand in the middle and must wait for us all to move.

It’s only now that I notice the stench. I’ve never smelled anything worse.

People are gagging. Some don’t even have time to bend over. I barely do. The disgusting smell forces us to keep vomiting until we are emptied. I stay bent on my knees, staring at my soiled legs. When I think it’s over, I raise my teary gaze.

A young woman is kneeling right in front of me. Her blonde hair is pulled to the side, and strings of saliva hang from her lips. She doesn’t care that she’s revealing her most intimate parts to the world.

I look away awkwardly.

I try to breathe through my mouth, but the nauseating taste is instantly on my tongue. I gag again, empty.

There are about fifty of us. I spot a tattooed muscle man, a brunette in his forties, but most people here are old. One is jumping around like he’s trying out new sneakers, shouting that he has both legs again. My subconscious presses on me its opinion of where I am. I try to ignore it.

A massive dome rises above our heads. Long, thin stalactites hang from the walls. The rock is black as night. We’re standing on some kind of rim. I cautiously walk to the edge and try looking down. From the bottomless depths, a fiery tornado rises. It’s miles away, yet with every step I take, I feel my skin burning. I retreat to the wall.

“Friends!” a voice booms behind us. “Friends, may I have your attention.”

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We all turn around, and my subconscious triumphantly cries out I was right!

There stands a devil.

One withered old woman kneels and prays. Others quickly follow suit.

The devil surveys this with amusement. He is tall and sturdy as an oak tree, with a bull neck, massive hairy forearms, and calves as large as melons. He stands with a relaxed posture, hands on his hips, and a distinctly protruding beer belly.

“Welcome to Hell, friends.” His voice is surprisingly cultured.

An old man steps forward, makes the sign of the cross in the air, and screams over the roar of the fire, “In the name of Jesus Christ, I command you to leave, Satan!”

“Don’t take the Lord’s name in vain, bishop!” The devil crosses himself ironically. “And not the boss’s name either, while we’re at it. Besides, we both know if you met baby Jesus, you’d fuck him.”

His face, in contrast to his wrestler’s body, is handsome. He exudes intelligence and substantial charisma. He looks like Marlon Brando at the start of his weight gain. His wrists and neck are adorned with braided leather straps and strands of beads, and he’s wearing purple Crocs. He looks human… except for his horns, which grow out of his lush black locks and curl around his temples like a mountain sheep’s. And his rat tail. It’s bare and about six feet long. It ends in a bony point.

“So, friends, time is running out.” Strangely, though he never raises his voice, I can still hear him clearly. He simply walks past the shouting bishop. “Please follow me.”

Everything seems unbelievable; my head is empty as a discarded nutshell. I feel like I did back when a bomb exploded under our car in Afghanistan.

But still, I try to think.

It would be nice if I could think up answers to questions like, “Why I am here?” and “How do I get out?”

All I know is: I was driving home from a night shift. And apparently, I didn’t make it. That’s really all I’m certain of.

I take in the wrinkled faces of the aged; there are more men than women here, and only a few people of working age. One of them, a muscle-bound man adorned with gang tattoos, has picked up a rock. He holds it like a claw. He slowly makes his way through the motionless crowd.

I watch him, and a crazy idea sprouts in my head: together we could defeat the devil.

The man looks at me, wondering if I’ll join him. But then I slowly shake my head, indicating that it’s not a good idea: we have no idea what we’re up against.

The heavyweight ignores me and approaches the devil with a raised rock.

“How can I help you?” asks the devil.

The man howls out something about having beaten bigger fighters. He’s a big man, his muscles pumped up with steroids. He’s this devil’s match in size and weight.

The spawn of hell assumes a boxer’s stance and teases the man to try it. The tip of his tail whips back and forth like a cat ready to catch a bird.

The man charges with a wild shout. The devil waits until he arrives… and suddenly a man’s torn-off face is sailing in the air.

The devil’s right hand was so fast, I didn’t even register its movement.

The man turns and stumbles in our direction. Bloodshot eyes gaze at us from his jagged skull.

“Hey buddy, where you going?” the devil taunts him.

He takes two quick steps and grabs the man by the ankles, bashing him against rock as if he were dusting off a tablecloth. As if the man’s body weighed five pounds instead of a good two-fifty.

The kindly, wry expression is gone. Now his handsome tanned face twists into a maniacal grin. All that’s left of his opponent is a smashed bag of muscles, but the devil still isn’t satisfied. He grabs the man’s shattered skull in his hand.

“I’m undemanding,” he pants over the pile of bones and tendons. “But I do demand discipline. Remember that.”

With a swift movement, his right hand grabs the man’s head by the chin and effortlessly tears it off. He stands for a moment over the body’s smoking remains, inhaling deeply through his nose and exhaling slowly through his mouth, as if trying to regain his inner peace.

After reopening his eyes, he is smiling once more.

“Alright friends, shall we finally get going?” he says.

“Oh my God…” moans the severed head. “Lord have mercy…”

“Shut up,” the devil replies softly as he kicks it off into a cave.

The detached intestines come to life and slither like a snake into the cave, followed by the torn body crawling on its elbows after its own head.

“Want to see a trick?” the devil winks at us. “Come on, it’s one you’ve never seen!”

I make eye contact with the pretty blonde.

“Are we in Hell?” she whispers.

There’s every indication, but I dare not say it out loud.

The devil’s voice booms through the cavern, amplified by echoes: “Abracadabra!”

And from the depths of the chasm, where an endless inferno swirls, pieces of iron begin to fly. They are red-hot, spinning in the air and illuminating the rocky walls like giant fireflies. The pieces meet and fit with metallic clicks. It takes less than a minute, and from where we stand, a fifty-yard bridge now stretches to the opposite rim.

“Alright folks! Let’s go!”