by Ramy Vance
This was where the boy grew up.
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With a click, the front door unlocked and an eight-year-old EightBall—Newton was his real name—walked in with his mom and dad. The three of them looked elegant, like they’d just come from a party. His mother wore a floral dress, and his father a V-neck sweater and a red tie. Newton had on the same V-neck sweater as his father and a pair of red tennis shoes.
The young boy ran into the living room and I braced myself for the expected surprise when he saw two strangers standing there. But the boy didn’t show any surprise or fear or anything, really.
He didn’t even indicate he knew we were there. All he did was run straight to the piano and start playing.
Here was the boyhood version of the kid I knew so well. Short, cropped hair, a bright smile … there was no mistaking him. Except this kid had never joined the HuMans—a gang hell-bent on terrorizing Others. He’d never gotten their characteristic tattoos all over his face—tattoos of all the different religious symbols that were largely debunked with the gods’ departure. He had yet to be hardened by losing his family, his childhood.
This was EightBall before all that crap happened to him.
“That’s good, honey,” his mom said from the other room. “But practice will have to wait. We have guests tonight, so please go wash up.”
“Sure thing, Mom.” EightBall jumped from the piano bench and ran toward the bathroom.
The family moved about, completely oblivious to our presence. And even though they looked and even smelled alive, they lacked a certain presence that Bella and I had. Looking at them was like looking at a moving photograph; you knew it was based on something that existed, just like you knew that that thing wasn’t the photograph itself.
The table was set, the final plate placed just as the doorbell rang. EightBall ran to the door. From where I stood, I couldn’t see who was there. But as soon as I heard the voice say, “Young Master Newton, how are you this fine day?” I knew exactly who was coming to dinner.
As if punctuating my thoughts, EightBall cried out, “Uncle Penemue!” and the eight-foot-tall, muscular, tweed-wearing angel walked into the living room.
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EightBall’s parents greeted Penemue with warmth and love, like they were old friends. “Please sit,” EightBall’s dad said. “Can I get you something to drink?”
“Actually, I brought a little something something to the party.” Penemue pulled a bottle of Drambuie from his wings.
He handed the bottle to EightBall’s mom, who appraised it. “Ahhh, Drambuie … the closest thing Earth has to ambrosia.”
Penemue chuckled. “Indeed.”
“Can I have some?” EightBall asked.
“I’m afraid, young Master Newton,” Penemue said, “this is a delight that must wait until your body grows in height and age, and your mind is imbued with enough experience to handle the wonder that is Drambuie.”
“Huh?” the kid said.
EightBall’s dad laughed, patting his son on his head. “That’s Uncle Penemue speak for ‘You’ll have to wait until you grow up.’ ”
“Indeed, young Master Newton. Indeed.”
↔
What followed was a perfectly pleasant dinner with laughter and joy—what came from four people who loved each other sharing a meal. Not that we really saw much of it.
We spent the dinner trying to find a clue as to what was happening, but everywhere we went was a dead end. The front door wouldn’t open to our touch, nor would any windows. We couldn’t interact with our surroundings, which made us helpless to do anything but watch.
“What is this?” Bella asked. “I get that we’re in one of Penemue’s most painful memories, but what is this?”
“I … I don’t know,” I said. “Bella, this would be a perfect time for ‘I’m the guide’ to start guiding.”
Bella shrugged. “Heaven and Hell are built on layers, like an onion. Some layers overlap others and can interact with them. Other layers are just for observing, with no way to actually influence what’s happening.”
I gave Bella a blank look. “You’re talking to us like Others do—a puzzle wrapped in an enigma wrapped in completely useless information.” I tried to smile, to show my comment for the joke it was intended to be, but we were up against a deadline and I wasn’t feeling very funny right now.
“Think of it this way: Heaven and Hell have these cameras that let you peer into other places. Some cameras are just that—a passive, one-way opportunity to observe. But some cameras come with loud speakers so you can talk to the people inside. And others have even more interactivity than that, like—”
“A robot or a drone?” OK—deadline or not, you can always joke about robots and drones.
Except now it was Bella’s turn to be all serious. “Exactly,” she said, without a hint of mirth. “That’s exactly it. And the more powerful you are, the more layers you have access to. The more robots and drones you can control. And if you’re supremely powerful, then you can actually transport yourself into the situation.”
“I see,” I said … and I did. Heaven and Hell were filled with messengers of different degrees and stature. Everything from vague visions to prophets, all the way to archangels delivering the message. Generally, we heard about them when they made their way to Earth, but it made sense that that was how communication worked here, as well.
I guess neither place was really into privacy, either.
“You said supremely powerful beings could do it all, huh?” I asked.
Bella nodded.
“So, if I were a supremely powerful being seeking to torture myself, what would I do?” I muttered as I walked around the room.
“What are you looking for?”
“Dust,” I said, enjoying my own cryptic response. And that’s when I saw it … Right on the edge of the piano near the photographs was a bit of disturbed dust. I knew it hadn’t been us who’d disturbed it, because we couldn’t interact with our surroundings. And as for everyone here—with the except of EightBall—no one had gone near the piano, and he hadn’t touched the surface.
“Bella,” I said, “how do you interact with a layer that you know is there but can’t see?”
“You can’t. Not unless the person in that layer chooses to interact with you … assuming they can.”
“Oh, they can alright.” I stared into empty space next to the piano and muttered, “Come on, big guy—show yourself. I know you’re there.”
Nothing happened.
“Jean, please. Now is not the time to go insane.”
“I’m not. He’s here—right here. Aren’t you, big guy? Come on, show yourself. Please.”
Again nothing.
“Penemue, I’m begging you. Show yourself.”
Still nothing.
“You owe me, you bastard. You owe me. Bella is here, but she’s in danger. And you owe me.” I pointed at Bella. “She’s going to get trapped in here unless we get her out. And apparently we can’t do that unless we get you out of here first.”
Still nothing. So I decided to try another tack: guilt.
“Do you remember what you said to me the day we discovered Bella was trapped in Heaven and the bridge to get in was destroyed? I had no way to get back to her. Do you remember what you said to me? Because I do. I said that I was never going to see her again and you said, ‘Probably not, but then again, it has been my experience that there is rarely only one way to get to a destination. After all, one could walk, run or fly. Bella is still there.’
“And when I gave you a blank look, you said, ‘My point, dear Human Jean, is that she got there using an entirely different method than the First Law did. My point is that if there are two ways to Heaven, then perhaps there is a third. My point is that if there is a will, there is a way. But really, my point is that if I am ever going to find a way back into Heaven before my body is old and brittle, I must have time to concentrate.’ You were reading a book. Something about physics.” I snapped
my finger as I tried to remember what it was. “I can’t remember the title. It was …”
A figure manifested, his face covered in tears of light. “An Advanced Understanding of Quantum Physics. A dead end, really. Seems that quantum physics doesn’t really come into play when it comes to Heaven.”
Penemue stood before me, and although he was there, it didn’t feel like him. It was like I was looking at another photograph.
“Penemue,” I said.
The twice—now three-times—fallen angel put up a shushing finger. “Hold on … we’re about to get to the good part.” He pointed at the table where everyone was clearing up.
As soon as the last plate had been taken to the kitchen, EightBall called out, “Can I go outside now?”
“Sure thing, honey. Just stay by the old oak tree where I can see you.”
“OK, Mom,” he said as he ran out the door.
“This is it,” Penemue said. “The moment I took all this happiness away.”
And before I could say anything, there was a loud rumble as the words, “Thank you for believing in us, but it’s not enough. We’re leaving. Good luck,” rang out like a klaxon warning of an imminent nuclear strike.
Then there was an explosion as the apartment around us blew apart into a million little pieces of nothing.
Again and Again and Again, Ad Infinitum
On my first day of boot camp, my drill sergeant yelled, “How does one survive an explosion?”
Me being an idiot and not really getting how things worked there, asked, “How?”
The drill sergeant gave me the biggest shit-eating grin I’ve ever seen (not an easy feat—I’m friends with the demi-god of refuse, a creature literally made from crap) and sent me on the longest run of my life.
When I got back, exhausted and defeated, my drill sergeant asked me if I still wanted to know how one survives an explosion.
I nodded. “Absolutely.”
This time his eyes widened as veins bulged from his forehead, like he was trying to make me explode with his mind (which, if I survived it, would have given me my answer). I was sent on another run and by the time I got back, I discovered that everyone in my platoon knew the answer and were told, under threat of death, not to share it with me.
Over the next few weeks, that drill sergeant asked me every day if I wanted to know the answer, and every day I said “Yes,” thus condemning myself to more running, push-ups and other torturous exercise.
Was I a glutton for punishment? Yes. Was I being a defiant asshole? Yes. But I also really wanted to know the answer.
Despite my obvious aversion to authority, I graduated top of my class and was enlisted straight out of boot camp into Special Forces (which resulted in more training hell).
On my last day, I asked the old drill sergeant, “How does one survive an explosion?”
He gave me that same shit-eating grin he always did. “You pray you don’t, son, because being put back together hurts more than the blue flames of Tartarus.” Then he lifted his pant leg, revealing a wooden stump and a catheter filled with yellow piss.
I’d always thought the old drill sergeant was a bit of wimp. After all, he survived an explosion and came back somewhat whole, and was able to fulfill what I was sure was his lifelong ambition of torturing young cadets.
But when the apartment exploded and my body was torn into a thousand little pieces, I felt nothing. Well, that’s not exactly true … I felt a mild discomfort that was over in a flash as soon as my brain was splattered like a paint-filled balloon.
Then I started to come together, the thousand pieces that made me up slowly crawling back to each other, stitching back together. My brain was the first part of me to become whole, and once it was whole, it became my personal Rosetta Stone of agony, translating the meaning of pain in all sorts of soul-destroying ways.
I have never hurt like I did that day when Penemue’s inferno put me back together. And as soon as I was whole, I did something I’ve never done in my all my days … I got on my knees and prayed to the GoneGods that I’d never feel that pain again.
↔
As soon as I could focus again, I realized that I wasn’t the only thing that was whole again. So was Bella (thank the GoneGods), and so was everything else.
The apartment was whole, as was EightBall’s family. But unlike the obvious torment that painted Bella’s face and mine, they looked perfectly normal.
Well, normal isn’t exactly the word I’d use. They looked whole and human, except for the strange fact that they were moving in reverse. And I don’t mean walking in reverse, or gesturing in that way mimes do when pretending to go back in time.
They were moving in reverse, and it looked like I was watching a film being slowly rewound.
At the point I gained consciousness was the moment when EightBall’s mother closed the door behind young Newton. Except she was opening it and he was running in backward before going to the kitchen, then coming out with his dirty dishes and sitting back down at the dinner table.
Penemue—well, dinner-guest Penemue—took back his bottle of Drambuie, walked backward and out the door. The piano playing, conversations—everything that had just happened reversed like some drawn-out scene from Twin Peaks before everyone got up and left the room. They left the apartment empty again, just like when we first arrived.
I turned to see Penemue. The angel was whole again, and from his own pained expression, I saw that he had experienced it all as well. The explosion, the agonizing re-stitching. The whole ordeal.
But he didn’t only experience it as an observer—dinner-guest Penemue must have felt it, too. The angel was literally doubling up on his punishment.
Once the family was outside again, everything stopped and for a blissful second, nothing moved as the world went silent. No, silent isn’t the right word, because silence implies that there was sound still lurking somewhere.
This was more like the permanent absence of sound. Like we were standing in a place where sound could not be.
Then there was a jerk as everything started again, and time flowed as it was meant to, with seconds ticking forward toward whatever was to come next.
And what came next was EightBall and his family entering the modest apartment, just as they had the first time. As they sat for dinner, I realized what was happening.
We were going to relive this whole damn thing again.
And again.
And again …
This was the heart of Penemue’s inferno, his personal Hell.
Reliving the moment he most regretted again and again in all its pain-filled glory.
↔
“No,” Bella said. “I can’t go through that again.”
I looked over at my wife as her eyes welled up with tears of fear at the coming pain.
Bella was afraid, and seeing that expression was so foreign to me. I’d seen her at her worst. Hell, I’d watched her die, being stabbed to death by blades she knew were coming. She was afraid then and I saw the same look in her eyes now.
She was my Amazonian warrior, my Valkyrie, and seeing her so afraid was so surprising and foreign to me that it pierced the very fabric of my being. The sight of her like that was the most painful thing I’d ever experienced and I’d take a thousand explosions and re-stitchings over seeing her like that for another second.
I rushed over to her and held her tight. “You won’t … you won’t. I promise.” Then, turning to the only person who could stop this pain from happening again, I yelled at the angel, “Stop this. Now.”
His answer was light-filled tears that rolled down his cheeks and a subtle shake of his head.
“Please,” I said, walking over to him. “I’m begging you. Please.”
The angel ignored me, pointing at young Newton. “So much joy stolen by me. He has suffered because of what I did. And so must I.”
“By accident,” I screamed as I watched in horror as the family made their way through dinner. I knew that with every bite, every jo
ke shared, every quip exchanged, we were one second closer to the coming agony. “It was an accident. Not something you did intentially. That has to count for something.”
Penemue just shook his head. “Pain intentially inflicted or not, is still pain.”
“So what? Do you think that reliving this over and over again is penance?”
Penemue just nodded like he was answering a very simply, straightforward question. “It is all I deserve.”
EightBall stood from the table. In a moment he would go outside. In a moment it would happen again.
“Jean-Luc,” Bella said, her voice shaking.
“Bella,” I said, running to her side, “when he goes outside, you follow him. Do you hear me?”
Bella gave me an uncertain nod. “What about you?”
“I’m going to figure this out. But in case I can’t, I want you to be outside by the oak tree. You’ll be safe there. Come back in as soon as it’s over.”
Another uncertain nod.
Good enough, I thought. Turning back to the angel, I considered what to say next.
But as I mulled over my next words, Bella shouted, “I can’t get out.”
Looking over my shoulder, I saw that Bella was trapped inside, some invisible force field keeping her in the house.
“This place is designed to punish,” Penemue said. “Only the constructs can leave. The living”—he gestured at Bella—“and those who were once alive are trapped here. I am so sorry, Human Jean-Luc, but I warned you. You should have left when I asked.”
I heard a low rumbling as the thunder of the coming explosion built momentum. “No, you can stop this.”
“I have already told you, this is my prison. This is my forever.”
A voice echoed in the room—“Thank you for believing in us, but it’s not enough. We’re leaving. Good luck”—as the rumbling grew in intensity.
