by Ramy Vance
Impaled on her own blade, Hecate feels her lifeblood drain from her, experiencing an emotion she did not expect during her last moments.
She is grateful. Grateful to finally leave this GoneGod World. Grateful to join her sisters and husband in death. Grateful that her pain will soon end.
Marc lets her drop, leaving her to bleed out. Taking a step toward the hotel’s back door, he feel a weak, fumbling hand on him. The boy.
“Thank you, Jean.”
“I am not Jean,” Marc says.
But Marc’s words do not register. EightBall simply looks down at his would-be killer and says, “You knew she’d let me go. That if she saw my desire for revenge, she’d let me go. And that was the only way to save me?”
Marc pauses for a second, mulling over the kid’s question. After a long pause, he nods. “Yeah, I suppose I did.” And with silent disgust, muses that maybe he’s not so different from Jean-Luc, after all.
Part VI
Hell
Prologue 4
Penemue might have perished in those first years had it not been for the kindness of one mortal.
A human named Bella.
The human, discovering him passed out in an alleyway, pulled Penemue out of the gutter and into her home.
Before the gods left, Penemue knew what was written on the souls of humans. Therefore, he knew in a way that contained no hyperbole or exaggeration that there were few brighter souls that Bella’s.
Seeing her again, Penemue knew that the gods’ GrandExodus had done nothing to dim her soul’s glow.
She offered him a place to sleep in her hotel, a tiny attic to call home. And living with her in the One Spire Hotel, Penemue found a sliver of peace in this new GoneGod World.
Of course, it was not without some static. For one thing, one of the other residents was also an angel, the once-upon-a-time captain of the Lord’s Army and an angel of Heaven.
But the Angel of Heaven and the Angel of Hell did not fight. Maybe once they had been enemies, but here on Earth they were two being suffering the same reality.
Comrades in misery, brethren of fate.
Old grudges did not hold the same credence here.
No, the static did not come from Penemue’s mortal enemy … it came from Bella’s husband. He had been fighting with the human armies against Others and, three years later, returned to help his wife run the hotel.
He was suspicious of Others, and thought Penemue drank too much.
Maybe the angel did, but what else was there to do on Earth? Better to drink and read than just read.
Penemue and Jean quarreled.
They quipped.
And just before it could turn into anything serious, in walked Bella with her indomitable will. A will she used to force peace.
Until, that is, she died.
Dying Isn’t What You’d Expect
I had always hoped to die by Bella’s side, but I knew that was too much to expect. I was destined to to die alone. Of that much, I was sure.
When I was in the Army, I always expected that an Other would get the best of me on some deserted island—or worse, catch me with my pants down in some two-star hotel room. The best I could have hoped for then was dying on my feet, fighting the good fight to my bitter end (and hopefully with my pants up).
Then Bella died (the first time) and I quit the Army and returned home to fulfill her promise.
During those days, I figured that I’d get electrocuted changing some lightbulb. Or worse, I’d manage to make it to my seventies, when natural causes would catch up with me and I’d die alone in my bedroom, probably staging some battle between G.I. Joes and Smurfs.
But however death eventually found me, I’d always assumed it would be me all by my lonesome, and if I died today, well, then I had figured right.
I turned to face the darkness. It was still several yards away and I guessed I had about thirty seconds before it hit me. Thirty seconds was a long time and I was genuinely lost as to what to do. Let my life flash before my eyes? Remember the good times? Ask forgiveness for my sins?
The answer was simple. I did what I always did when the end seemed near: I thought of Bella.
Except this time, I didn’t have to remember one of the happy times—the simple moments of being together, like watching TV or sitting across from each other sipping on coffee—because before I conjured one of those moments, two perfect arms wrapped around my chest. They held me in an embrace that was so far beyond anything Heaven could hope to give you.
“What are you doing?” I said, the side of me that wanted to protect her seeking to push out her of the portal.
“I’m testing your theory about the angel not killing you,” she said with a chuckle.
The darkness drew closer. We had ten seconds at best.
“I don’t suppose I could convince you to leave.”
“Not on your life.” She rested her head against my back. Heaven. Pure Heaven.
“OK,” I said, looking at a darkness so close that if I reached out I could touch it. “So much for dying alone.” I chuckled.
“Excuse me—” Bella started, but before she could say anything more, the darkness crashed into us … and there was nothing.
↔
A cool rush washed over us like stepping outside on a winter day, and with the cold came the complete lack of air. I guess that’s what the nothing of the void is … nothing. Nothing to latch on to, nothing to see. Nothing to breathe.
But this wasn’t like drowning. There was no thrashing about as we desperately tried to find air. No panic, no flailing that usually came with drowning. Instead, we were calm. At peace. I guess Penemue meant to end us, but he didn’t want us to suffer in our last moments.
Or maybe this was what it was like for all the Others who had let the darkness envelop them—a peaceful goodbye to their homes and gods.
Whichever it was, I knew we had almost no time left. And what little I did have, I decided to spend as best I could. With a kiss.
Our lips met, and Bella folded into me, her mouth pressing against mine. Evidently she’d wanted the same thing.
Embracing her, I knew that we had a few moments left before we passed out and then … well … bye bye birdie. We’d fall unconscious before we slipped into nothing. All in all, not the worst way to go.
Another few seconds and that would be it. Holding her tight, I let sleep overtake us.
As my mind went woozy, I thought of Penemue. He would suffer for our deaths—deaths we chose, and somehow that didn’t seem fair. So using the last of me, I said, “I forgive you.”
I didn’t know if he could hear me, or if the words would do anything to offer him comfort, but it was all I could do.
↔
But we didn’t die. Instead, we woke up in the darkness. A darkness that now had air in it. Flipping open my cellphone and using its screen as light, I saw that Bella was there. Her cheeks, flush with oxygen, bore a perfect pinkish hue.
“So we made it,” she said.
“We did.” And before she could say anything, I kissed her again. I kissed her like I should have done from the first moment I saw her and the hundred moments in between.
Except this time, we had air.
“Humm,” she moaned. “I’ve been waiting for that.”
“Yeah, sorry. I was … you know …”
“Not convinced it was me?”
I nodded.
“I figured. These things can be tricky. Heaven and Hell, and all this other godly stuff.”
“And you weren’t acting like you. Not always,” I said.
“What do you mean?”
“Well, for one thing, you got jealous about Medusa. That wasn’t you … um, I mean, isn’t you.”
“Hey,” she said, giving me a light tap on my chest. “I just spent the last seven years alone in Heaven and, believe it or not, thinking about you. You can excuse a girl a little out-of-character jealousy.”
“And the distant thoughts. It was like you wer
e somewhere else half the time.”
Bella squeezed my hands before sighing. “Well, yeah. About that …” Her voice trailed off in the way it did when she was about to tell me something I didn’t want to hear.
“Hey, you’re not breaking up with me here. I mean, if you are, you might want to reconsider. I’ll make a scene,” I said, looking around at the nothing we stood in.
She chuckled, but not as hard as I would have liked.
“I was distant because I’m not fully here.”
“What do you mean?” I narrowed my eyes, then poked her on the chest like she’d done me. “You feel like you’re here.”
“My mind … it’s also there.” She pointed up.
“There, there? As in Heaven there?”
She nodded.
“How is that possible?”
“I don’t know,” she said. “All I know is that a part of me is still up there. I can feel it, and every now and then I get a glimpse of what I built up there.”
“Built? Feel? Glimpse? So much about that statement is hurting my head.”
This time she chuckled. “Yeah, me too. All I can say is that it’s like I’m both here and up there. Even when I was on Earth, I could feel myself still up in Heaven, floating around in what I had created.”
“All right, I need you to slow down and talk to me like someone who hasn’t spent the last few years dead and alone in a celestial plane generally reserved for the pure of heart.”
Another chuckle. And hearing it made my heart soar.
“OK,” she said, staring at the nothing we were in. “It’s not like we have anything else to do …” Pushing away from me, she floated a few feet off.
I followed, amazed at how easy it was to move around in this place. Yes we were floating, but we could control our movements using the same impulses I’d normally use to command my feet to move.
“Up in Heaven, I could build things using my will. I think it’s the same way that Others use their magic. Will it, and it manifests. Only difference is that I don’t age when I do it.”
I nodded in understanding. A while back Bella had imbued me with the ability to burn time. It was when I learned that she wasn’t dead, dead like everyone else … but her soul had still somehow managed to find Heaven.
At the time, I had been fighting the Avatar of Gravity, an Other of near god-like power. Bella had saved me and with a kiss, she gave me the ability to burn some time. Time which I used to create an army of 1980s toys to take down the Avatar. (Think Ghostbusters, but instead of the Stay Puft Marshmallow Man, I manifested Voltron, the Thundercats, Transformers and just about every other badass from Saturday morning cartoons to kick his butt into oblivion.)
“OK,” I said, “so you’re building stuff. Like what, skyscrapers? You’re not pulling a Trump and putting your name in gold on everything.” I scowled at the garish thought.
“No, silly. But I am building things. Constructs that … Well, it’s hard to explain and doesn’t really matter right now. Let’s just leave it at this: I’m preparing for what I fear is to come.”
“Which is …” I gestured as though I was pulling teeth.
Another chuckle. By the GoneGods, I’d live and die a thousand times just to hear that sound. “I’ve found things up there. Records— No, more than records. History books that talk about the past.”
“History books tend to be about the past.”
“Smartass. And by history, I don’t mean ours. I mean what came before us. I know this will sound crazy, but I don’t think this is the first time the gods left.”
↔
Remember in the old cartoons when Bugs Bunny or Donald Duck heard something unbelievable and their eyes popped out of their skull while their jaws dropped to the ground? I didn’t have a mirror, but I was pretty sure that was exactly how I looked at that moment.
“What do you mean, ‘Not the first time’?”
“Exactly what I said. I think the gods have left before. But that ‘before’ wasn’t like our now, if that makes sense. I think the first time they left was a far more primal time than ours.”
“Primal? Don’t you mean primordial?” I said, giving myself silent grammar kudos.
She pursed her lips, unimpressed. “I mean primal. The only creations they made were basic life and nothing else.”
“So they made the dinosaurs?” Now it was my turn to chuckle.
Bella didn’t laugh. She just shook her head and shrugged. “Maybe. I don’t know. What I do know is in that first round of their godly experiments, they didn’t create humans or minotaurs or dwarves or onis or … You get the idea. They just made the universe—our universe—and then left.”
“Left to go where? Isn’t the universe everything? Where the hell else is there to go?”
Another shrug. “I don’t know. I’m trying to figure it out. My best guess is that they left and came back literally millions of years later.” She shook her head in frustration. “You don’t understand. There is so much to go through and, well, I need to get back up there so—”
“No,” I said. I would have stomped my foot, but there was no ground to stomp my foot on.
“No?” She seemed genuinely confused.
“No,” I repeated. “You’re not going anywhere. Not without me.”
“Oh.” Her lips curled slightly as my meaning became clear to her. “You might not get the final say on that.”
“Oh yeah? Try me.”
“Look,” she said, drawing in close, “I don’t want to go anywhere without you. Never again. But if I can find a way back up there, I will. With you, great. But I’ll go alone if that’s the only way. I think the gods are planning to come back. Up there, I found this golden pillar … something they called Irim Emad. On it were these carving that—”
But before she could finish, a loud boom preceded a screech. Then we heard Penemue’s voice—if Penemue was pretending to be a pissed off James Earl Jones. “Enough, mortal. Speak not of matters of which you have no understanding!”
I’ve heard that kind of pissed off angel before … Michael and Miral, and a couple others during my Army days. It was the voice angels used when their feathers were being ruffled by us lowly humans speaking of divine matters they felt we had no right to.
I gave Bella’s hand a squeeze as I drew her in close. “Hey there, big guy. Don’t suppose you could show yourself for a chat?”
Nothing.
“Come on. Come on over to this nothing. It’s comfy, and I miss you.”
Still nothing.
“Hey, I know you want us to leave. I tell you what, we’ll do exactly that—leave. But only after we get to see you one more time. You know, to catch up and talk about things like the latest Kanye West … ah, I mean Ye rant, or wax lyrical about what it’s like to be in Hell.”
More nothing.
“OK, but it’s that or we start talking about the gods again. Bella, what were you saying? You found this golden pillar. Irim e-gad?”
“Emad,” Bella corrected.
As soon as she said the word, we heard an audible sigh as a fireplace manifested from thin air.
No fire was lit—nor did it seem as if any fire had ever been lit in it—but a light emanated from the other side.
Getting down on my knees (which was harder than you’d think when floating in nothing) I crawled through, closely followed by Bella. Whatever this was, it was the pathway to the next layer of Hell.
And who knew that the next layer of Hell would be a moderately decorated apartment that looked like a page out of an Ikea catalog?
Empty Hell wasn’t empty. It was the living room of a middle-class, suburban apartment.
Explosive Families and Families Exploding
Bella and I crawled through the light where, closer, we saw it was a—
Oh brother, I thought to myself, chimney. The entrance to the next layer of Hell is through the chimney. Go figure.
Actually, thinking back through my history with Penemue, it made perfect sense
that the entrance was a chimney. Penemue was obsessed with Christmas and Santa Claus. For one thing, he once got a hobo blind stinking drunk just because the guy was overweight and had a big white beard. When I’d found him in the alley, Penemue insisted that the guy was St. Nick. He wasn’t.
At least, I’m pretty sure he wasn’t.
Then there was the time he got stuck in an industrial chimney in an abandoned warehouse because—and I quote—he “wanted to bring gifts to the children.” It took me three hours to get him out of the damn thing. When he finally came tumbling out, it was with a giant red sack filled with gifts that he got from only the GoneGods knew where.
I had pointed out that there were no children in an abandoned warehouse. But he had said, “Build it and they will come,” before insisting we wait there. Sure enough, several hours later families started showing up. One family brought a folding table and some egg nog, and were soon followed by a dozen more families with their own contributions to the potluck.
So, he had planned the little gathering ahead of time and was doing a dry run with the chimney for the kids, only to discover he was too big to fit through. Not that anyone cared; all the families there were down on their luck, and that Christmas … well, that was probably the best Christmas I’ve ever had.
“Damn you, Penemue,” I muttered, looking around the apartment.
The place looked normal enough. A three-bedroom, moderately sized apartment with a few toys strewn about; a bit of mess, but not too bad. In this place, I felt love.
A piano sat at the far end with several family portraits on it. I walked over and picked one of them up. A young boy dressed in a suit and red tie smiled as two proud parents stood next to him, a hand on each shoulder.
I knew that picture—I’d seen it before. Hell, I was the one who found it. This was an apartment from Paradise Lot. But it wasn’t just any apartment … this was EightBall’s place.
