Paradise Lost Boxed Set

by R. E. Vance

  It was a common strategy amongst smaller pack hunters. We were larger than they were. Stronger, too. But because they had the numbers, they would most likely overrun us eventually and make a meal off our carcasses. But they’d take heavy losses in doing so. After a few rundowns, well, the herd would thin out so much that they wouldn’t be able to overrun anything anymore.

  But slowly wearing their prey down—tiring them out, making them weak, slow, stupid … and, if exhausted enough, forced to give up entirely? Well, that would mean a hell of a lot fewer losses.

  We needed a defensible position, somewhere we could make our stand and take down enough of them that they would go off in search of easier prey. At least, that’s what a pack of coyotes would do, and these creatures didn’t really seem like the avenge-their-fallen-comrades type. They would cut their losses rather than continue fighting.

  Here was hoping that a drunk, listless Penemue had watched enough Discovery Channel to imbue these guys with a similar pack mentality.

  We followed the river for some time until we came upon a low hillside, so jagged and rough as to form a wall. It wasn’t ideal, but given what we were up against, it was better than nothing. “There,” I yelled, pointing at the small enclave near the base of the hill.

  “What are we going to do there?” Judith countered. Even out of breath, she managed to sound all kinds of judgmental.

  “Mother,” Bella said, grabbing her arm and steering her to the enclave, “listen to Jean. This is what he does. And from what I hear, he’s damn good at it.”

  “Awww,” I said. “I’m good?”

  “Nothing to be proud of,” Bella said, and my heart sank. It was true: I was damn good at fighting Others. Killing Others. And of all my talents, that was the one thing Bella truly didn’t like me for.

  We made it to the enclave. I grabbed Marty by the base of his jaw and ran his fangs along the flat of my sword’s blade. “Sorry about that, little fellow,” I said. “We need your poison.”

  Marty hissed. Angrily.

  I handed Bella my sword. “A flesh wound should kill these guys now. Judith, watch the hilltop and make sure none of the more enterprising little beasties get the drop from behind.”

  “And how exactly am I supposed to do that?”

  “I don’t know … Don’t your scowling powers come with a heat ray?” I said as the little bastards tumbled closer to us. “Just warn us. Now get ready!”

  Then, picking up a large rock in each hand, I readied myself for the attack.

  One by one, the little raptor-like, three-headed beasties showed up until they formed a perimeter around us. Like coyotes, they kept their distance, with the occasional go-getter dipping in to nip at our heels.

  Bella or I would take a swing, but the damn thing would jump back before we could make contact. Swinging—especially with the intent to kill—was tiring.

  I was right: Penemue had seen the same documentary as me after all.

  On the other hand, Marty was a hell of lot quicker than us, lurching forward with such speed and timing that he managed to take one down as it lunged forward.

  “Go Marty!” I said.

  Marty hissed approvingly.

  Bella eyed me. “Who?”

  “The viper,” I said, swinging and missing again. “He’s named Marty.”

  “Where did you get a pet viper named Marty?”

  “This isn’t really the time,” I said—when would it ever be the right time to explain how I knew Marty?—but added, “He’s a friend of a deceased friend who now lives in Castle Grayskull.”

  She didn’t get a chance to question me further—thank the GoneGods—because at that moment, Marty lunged for one of the beasties that was trying to bite Bella and managed to save her. And all at once we were back in the thick of it, with the viper as MVP.

  But despite Marty’s success, he only managed to take down one of the little bastards. There were dozens, and they weren’t giving up. I considered pulling out my pistol. As much as I wanted to conserve bullets, being lead-frugal wouldn’t do us much good if we were dead.

  I did a quick count of how many rounds I had. Eight clips, eight bullets in each. OK, I thought, pointing my pistol at the lead veloci-three-headed-raptor, let’s make this count.

  But before I could pull the trigger, three of the beasts went down with arrows in their sides. The three-headed beast turned around, each of their heads crying out a roar, howl or yelp as another three fell dead.

  Then there was a loud cry with an eerie, human quality to it (if that human were immensely powerful and Freddy Krueger scary). That was enough for the little herd of nasties, and the remaining ones ran off.

  Scanning the tree line, I looked for our savior, fully aware that we might have upgraded being eaten by a pack of three-headed raptors to being eaten by a huge, three-headed T-Rex.

  I caught a glimpse of what—or rather, who—had saved us.

  And my heart sank. “Medusa?” I said, pointing at the figure standing at the edge of the tree line.

  But before I could say anything else, she dropped back among the trees and was gone.

  Ahh, So I Was Kind of Seeing This Gorgon

  Was that really Medusa? I had only seen the figure for a second, and she wasn’t like the gorgon I knew. She didn’t look like the girl who used to work for the Paradise Lot police department, the girl who had a Hello Kitty handbag and rouge-painted cheeks.

  The girl who had sacrificed herself for the greater good, giving her life so that Paradise Lot wouldn’t be overrun by the murderous, apocalyptic monster Tiamat.

  The creature in the trees was feral, covered in mud and dirt, wearing animal skins rather than Gap. She was a huntress, a killer … Still, she had the same olive skin and rosy cheeks as the Medusa I’d known. And then there was the head of snakes. I even saw a snake that looked like Marty on the crown of her head. If that was Medusa, she’d found another Marty, and I was sure the murderous, mythical viper by my side wouldn’t take kindly to that.

  Assuming it was Medusa, that is.

  I looked over at Marty. The viper scanned the tree line and from the way his head looked around, I knew that he’d seen her, too. Or at least, he also thought he saw her. Just like me.

  “Medusa?” Bella came over to my side. She took my hand in hers—her touch was electric—and said, “Doesn’t Medusa live in Paradise Lot?”

  “She did,” I said, not taking my eyes off the tree line. “But she died saving us from … Well, saving us,” I sighed. What I didn’t say was that she’d saved Paradise Lot while on a date with me.

  That was something both Marty and Judith knew—and I could feel the mutual condemnation wafting from them. But I’d just reunited with my wife and I wasn’t going to blow day one with an awkward, “Ahhh, so I was kind of seeing this gorgon … It’s OK, though. You were dead and I was trying to move on, just like you would have wanted me to. Right?”

  I’d take condemnation over that conversational land mine any day.

  “I see. And you think you just saw her? Here?” Bella asked.

  Still looking out into the forest, I shrugged. “I don’t know. It all happened so fast, it could have been anyone, really.” As the words came out of me, I knew that I didn’t believe them.

  “Yeah. You’re probably right. I mean, as weird as this place is, why would she be here?” And from Bella’s tone, neither did she.

  Because my nightmare would be having the only two women I ever loved—the two I failed, the two who died because of my failures—in one place at once, I thought.

  Worst episode of Three’s Company ever.

  ↔

  I bent down to examine the dead bodies of the three-headed raptors. None of them had died from the darts themselves, the wounds too shallow to have caused too much damage, which meant they’d died from poisoning. And not just any poison. Their bodies were petrified, their skin stone-like. Another tick in the It’s Medusa column.

  I pulled out as many darts as I could find
and put them in my backpack. They probably had a little venom still on them. That done, I stood up and said, “We should go before more of them come back.”

  “Yeah,” Bella said. “We can’t count on our savior coming back when they do, can we?”

  I nodded. “Not sure we can count on much here.” I headed toward the stream, and as I did, I saw Judith watching me, wearing a very suspicious and uncharacteristic smile.

  ↔

  We followed the stream for several hours, and all the while my attention was on the trees surrounding us. I’d like to say that I focused there because I was worried about another attack, but that would be a lie.

  Well, not a complete lie. I really was worried about what was in the forest. But that wasn’t what preoccupied my thoughts. I knew what I saw. I knew who I saw … and I also knew that what I saw wasn’t real.

  It couldn’t be Medusa. She was dead. More than dead … she was a statue standing on Paradise Lot’s shore. It was her last act: turning herself into a statue that would stand forever vigilant, forever guarding the home she’d adopted after the gods left.

  I was starting to worry that this place didn’t just throw three-headed raptors at us. It also messed with our minds on a level that was beyond devious. It was entirely possible that this place somehow conjured things that shouldn’t be. And that’s how I saw it.

  Whatever was in the forest wasn’t Medusa. It was a construct, a conjuring … an illusion. Something created by my mind. And if I can conjure her, what else can I conjure? I thought, staring at Bella.

  Except that stroke of cognitive dissonance was too strong, too unappealing.

  Bella’s different, I told myself. She had to be. For one thing, she was the lone occupant in Heaven. I knew that. I also knew that Heaven and Hell were inexorably connected. Opposites. Two sides to the same coin. A yin-yang kind of thing—just to confuse religious traditions.

  And since this place was the opposite of Heaven, there was a strong connection between them. That connection could explain how and why she was here.

  She was real. Not a construct. Not an illusion.

  Before those thoughts could fully consume me, Marty hissed, jarring me out of my own head. Looking down at the forlorn viper who also looked in every direction other than the one we walked, I began to wonder if it was his hopes, his love that had summoned the construct of Medusa.

  Maybe all our minds could do that … And if we could, what other fresh hells were coming our way?

  I shook my head, resolving myself to one simple thought: Bella looked and felt real. Even if she wasn’t, she felt like she was real to me. And the same thought I had when I’d first stepped through the portal ran through my mind.

  I would happily live a lie with her than the truth without her.

  Wouldn’t I?

  Besides, what were truths and lies? Humans lived in narratives, after all—they were what made our lives feel safe, satisfying, logical. What harm would it do if I chose to believe in the narrative of this Bella being real?

  Not a narrative, my mind shot back. She’s real.

  We walked along the shore of a river that ran in a loop, the same waves cresting over rocks, the same leaves and sticks floating downstream for several feet before resetting, only to float down the same stretch of water again.

  We walked on for what felt like forever, our footsteps the only progress made in this place, until we came upon a cliff face where the stream narrowed into a tiny cave large enough for an oversized goose to swim through.

  An oversized goose, or a moderately-sized crocodile.

  I would have dismissed the cave as another anomaly in Hell’s landscape except for the strange inscription carved above its mouth: Lasciate ogne speranza, coi ch’intrate.

  “I don’t read Latin,” I said, “but I’ve heard Penemue quote that line enough times to know exactly what it means.”

  “ ‘Abandon all hope, ye who enter here,’ ” Bella muttered to herself with a sigh both familiar and troubling.

  I drew close to her. “What is it?” I asked gently. I knew if I tried to force the issue, she’d clam up and I’d never get it out of her.

  “It’s nothing.”

  “Come on,” I said. “I know you better than that. You shuddered when you spoke the words, like you used to. That glint in your eyes, the slight fluttering of the eyelids—you only ever did that when you had some bad news that you didn’t know how to tell me.”

  Bella pursed her lips like she was trying to suppress a smile. “You know me way too well.”

  “In this life and the next,” I said, echoing my words to her from the night I proposed.

  “Such knowledge is dangerous.”

  “Well, you know what my middle name is?”

  “Luc?”

  “I was going for ‘Danger,’ but Luc will have to do.”

  We chuckled. It felt good to banter with her. It felt more than good. It felt—

  “If you two are done with whatever mating ritual this is,” Judith growled, “maybe we can get a move on or something?”

  Mothers-in-law … nature’s prophylactic.

  “Do what?” I said, turning to her, my cheeks flushing.

  “Well, for one thing, Bella needs to share what she knows.”

  “I’m not sure that it’s relevant and—”

  “Out with it,” Judith said.

  I figured it was done. Bella would clam up and we’d have to wait until she was good and ready to tell us. There wasn’t a mental can opener in the world that would get her to talk.

  “There is a place with the same inscription in Heaven. What I know is that speranza doesn’t just mean hope … it also means future. I guess because hope can only happen at some point in the future. So really, you can read this as, ‘Abandon all futures, ye who enter.’

  “But the place in Heaven, speranza is replaced with the word, praeteritum. The past. There, you must abandon all pasts.”

  So much for her clamming up. I guess that was one of the special gems of our marriage.

  “So?” Judith pressed.

  “So, Mother”—Bella turned to the once-poltergeist—“Heaven is a ridiculously friendly place that is literally rainbows and puffy clouds. Everything there bends to my will like it’s trying to serve me. Make me happy. Everywhere but there … the only place in all of Heaven that scares me. The only place I have never dared to enter.” Bella’s voice trailed off, and I knew there was something else. Another tidbit she wasn’t sharing. But I wasn’t about to press for it. Not when we had the human can opener—Judith—to do the dirty work for me.

  But either Judith didn’t pick up that Bella knew more, or wasn’t about to push her luck, because she didn’t say anything. Typical. The one time I wanted her to speak and she kept her mouth shut. But when I wanted her to shut up, it was a tornado of judgement destroying my house of straw, wood and bricks.

  Yeah, yeah, I’m mixing The Wizard of Oz with The Three Little Pigs. But get Judith in the mood and she’s the Wicked Witch of the West and the Big Bad Wolf all rolled into one.

  “In Dante’s Inferno, that insignia marked Hell’s entrance, right?” I said.

  Bella nodded.

  “But if that’s the way in, why is it so small?”

  “ ‘Because you have done this, cursed are you above all livestock and all wild animals. You will crawl on your belly and you will eat dust all the days of your life,’ ” Bella said.

  “I thought you said Heaven was a fun place, like being on vacation. That’s pretty dark for someone spending eternity on vacation.”

  Bella chuckled. “It’s another quote.”

  “From Dante’s Inferno?”

  Bella shook her head. “The Bible. Genesis 3:14.”

  I raised an eyebrow. “The Bible? I never knew you to be into that, let alone quote it.”

  “I’m not. Well, I wasn’t. Just up there, you know … alone, you have a lot of time on your hands. So I started reading everything I could get my hands on: the Quran
, the Sutras, the Vedas, Tanach, Mishnah, Talmud and Midrash … the New Testament. Even the Book of Enoch. All of them, really.”

  “The Book of Enoch? Is that official canon up there?” I asked.

  “It’s all official canon up there,” she said. “There’s a library in Heaven filled with books that you’ve never heard of … and more. It would take an eternity to read them all. Good thing I have that and—”

  Before she could finish, I grunted, “Yeah, good thing, huh?” and bent down to examine the hole.

  “Jean, I didn’t mean it that way. I was just saying …”

  “I get it. Always look on the bright side of your death,” I mockingly sang to the tune in Monty Python’s Life of Brian.

  I looked up and saw Bella giving me that look she always gave me when she was sorry for how something she did made me feel—but not sorry for actually doing it. And given that she wasn’t sorry for allowing herself to be killed—granted, so she could find a way into Heaven in the hope of reopening the place and saving millions of lives—didn’t change the fact that I was bone-breaking, guts-hanging-out-of-me hurt that she’d chosen the world over me.

  I knew that I should have taken the high road, given her a smile and kept on keeping on. But me and high roads don’t really go hand in hand, so I gave her a sarcastic smile, an exaggerated Borat-esque thumbs-up and turned my back on her to examine the tiny archway. We’d have it out soon enough, but I just couldn’t face that with her now. So I chose to face Hell instead.

  The hole was big enough for us all to crawl through, but the problem was I couldn’t see what was on the other side. It was a black hole and I had no source of light, no way to see beyond the threshold.

  And that was the weird thing: the light. Yeah, we were outside in the dark, and in there was an even darker cave, but you’d still expect some of the outside light to seep into the hole, even if only a couple feet.

  But the light just stopped at the edge, like some sort of invisible shield prevented it from entering.

  Judith must have noticed it, too, because she stooped next to me with a heavy, banana-looking leaf and scooped some of the water from the stream in it. Then, angling the water’s surface so it caught the light, she projected it into the hole.