by James Wymore
“Hello?”
After a moment, he climbed down the steps and looked just below the edge of the ceiling. A shower stall with a plastic curtain on rings and a toilet occupied one corner. He looked back under the attic ladder, expecting to see a hallway, a kitchen, or a living room, but he stared at a blank wall. There was no door to the room. A bare lightbulb lit the room from a fixture in the center of the ceiling, but there were no windows. The only exit he could see was the hatch to the attic.
He climbed down, leaving the attic ladder extended. Gordy walked to the sink and felt around for a handle. Nothing . Hell was taunting him just like people had done to him his whole life. Even the kids at the school treated him like he was less than them. He imagined none of them were following the Z-word religion either, so they’d be down here with him soon enough. That thought gave him no comfort.
His hands passed under the faucet and it gave a short burst of water. The red light underneath lit and darkened. “Hell’s gone modern, y’all. Next week: doors.”
He held his hands under and felt the cold water pour over his fingers. He splashed a little up into his face and let it drip off the end of his nose above the sink as the water shut off. Gordy cupped his hands, letting the reactivated flow fill his palms and run over. Then, he brought it to his mouth and sucked. The water cooled his throat so he drank as much as he could before the water stopped. He scooped until his belly felt heavy and stretched.
Gordy shook his hands off in the sink and said, “My mother used to call that God’s cup.”
He heard the shower curtain click on its rings and he spun around to face the pulled curtain over the shower stall. “I’m not looking for trouble.” Hell of a thing to say in Hell .
Gordy crossed the room and braced himself. He took hold of the plastic in his fist and ripped it aside. The stall was empty. A new bar of soap sat on the holder. The showerhead was broad and round. Gordy brought the soap to his nose and sniffed. It was pungent and chemical. Probably an off brand . He set it back into place and turned the knob a quarter around the circle. He stuck his hand in the spray and felt the water take heat immediately. Hell has decent plumbers and better water pressure than my house .
He shut off the shower and saw motion in the corner of his eye. A small, reddish roach scurried up the eggshell surface and into the open maw leading back into the attic. The reds breed fast and are tough to kill off.
On the wall above the toilet was an acrylic board with a numbered list and writing he couldn’t read. He knew they were rules. He recognized the pattern from years of working in a school. Raise your hand and wait to be called on before you speak?
Gordy stood over the toilet and took a long, satisfying piss.
His stomach rumbled and Gordy showed his teeth. He raised his hand. “I don’t suppose there’s takeout in Hell?”
Gordy waited for an answer, but nothing replied. He wasn’t sure what he would have done, if he had gotten one. There was no “air in the pipes” sound or clicks from the house settling. Hell has a solid foundation or has had time to finish settling. No cracks though. Good construction . He was starting to miss the roach on the shower curtain. Any living creature was better than total, lonely silence. Gordy lowered his hand. You didn’t wait to be called on. That was the problem .
Gordy sat down on the cot and welcomed the creak from the wooden supports. He moved the blanket to the opposite end and used it as a pillow. His eyes were already heavy. Hell is exhausting .
He crossed his hands over his chest in a pose that reminded him of how vampires slept in the old black and white films. The corners of his stolen pictures poked his chest through his shirt pocket. Gordy took them out and held them above his face. He flipped through them for a few cycles, looking at the beach, the rose, and the bicycle.
He still held them as he lowered his hand to his side and stared at the opening to the attic. The smell of wood and cardboard from above drifted down into the room with him. He dangled the pictures down by the side of the cot and watched the green spots dance in his vision from the bare lightbulb.
Gordy didn’t remember falling asleep or dropping the photos on the floor.
This first time he woke up on the cot in Hell, he blinked against the glare of the bulb above him and took several minutes to process where he was. He looked around the room finally and tried to locate a light switch. Seeing none, he sat up. With no windows and no clocks, he had no way of knowing if this was supposed to be morning. With no eggs and bacon, does it really matter? His stomach rolled and his muscles felt weak. Hell is starvation with a shower.
He stood up and splashed his face with water from the sink. He drank a few more handfuls to fill his stomach, but it didn’t help.
Gordy felt his pocket and looked around under the cot for the pictures, but didn’t see them. He watched the pull cord with a plastic knob on the end dangle from the hatch leading back up into the attic. He wasn’t ready to explore up there again just yet.
There were no mirrors in the room either, he realized.
He started the shower and folded his clothes—the ones he woke up wearing—on the cot beside the blanket. He held up the dark blue underwear. A picture of fruit was printed on the faded tag inside. This looked like a pair from his own drawer in the world of the living. He imagined the boys finding him with his brains splattered and his drawers filled with his final death crap.
Gordy shook his head and dropped the underwear onto the cot.
He stood in his hot shower for the better part of an hour. He left the curtain open as steam billowed around him and out. The heat held, so it was hard to judge the time. Usually, cold water creeping into the shower was the hourglass that told Gordy when it was time to step back out of the shower into his crappy house and his crappy life.
He shut off the water and stepped out, dripping on the floor next to the toilet under the rules. No towel. You got me again, Hell. Classic Hell . He shook off. Rings spread out across the water in the toilet bowl as some of the drops landed there.
Gordy walked back to the cot and stared at the cord hanging down from the only exit. He could only think about food until he realized he hadn’t closed the hatch himself before he fell asleep. Cold moved through his veins and his testicles pulled up against his body.
“Where are the pictures?”
Gordy pulled his clothes on over wet skin, watching the attic hatch the entire time. He ignored the itchy feeling on his body and pushed his feet back into his shoes.
He approached the hatch with the same aching fear he had felt when he opened it the first time from above. You will not be alone . Those words had no comfort for him now that he was imagining his neighbors in Hell skulking around while he slept.
Gordy took hold of the cord just above the plastic. Instead of demons or an army of flesh-eating roaches, he was picturing another man like himself stuck in this place for God knew how long. He was more frightened by this prospect. Which God is the one that knows, is the question .
Gordy pulled and brought the ladder back down to the forty-five-degree angle. The same low darkness loomed above. He folded down the steps and climbed. As he blinked away the spots and waited for his eyes to adjust, he saw the same boxes as before.
“Hello? Who’s up here?”
The insulation and cardboard absorbed his words and cut their travel short. He climbed up and crouched by the opening, waiting.
Gordy stood and walked past the broomsticks and under the bicycle missing its wheels. Not going far in that, are we?
He thought about the picture of the bicycle with the big front wheel he was holding when he fell asleep, and he felt cold again, even in the stuffy attic.
The under-the-bed box was closed, and everything back in place. The Easter eggs had been collected and returned to their righted box. Gordy drew back and kicked the Easter box over, scattering the colored eggs deep into the attic off the plywood.
He opened the boxes and pushed aside the photo albums. Gordy stared at the s
leeve of loose pictures for a moment and then started leafing through the photos.
There it was. He wasn’t sure it was the same spot, but he thought it was. He pocketed the bicycle picture. He flipped through and found the thorns with the blurred rose. Gordy pocketed it and flipped a little further to find the beach. After taking it, he dumped the sleeve out onto the floor and hurled it across the attic, bouncing it off the underside of the roof.
“Leave me alone or I’ll put a hurt on you. I swear it.” Gordy’s throat hurt and he felt dizzy. He wasn’t even sure if one man could kill another in Hell.
Gordy walked back toward the hatch. He paused over the long broom handles and grabbed one. He smacked the metal of the bike frame as he passed under it. He hurled the handle down below through the hatch and climbed in.
Once the hatch was closed, he wedged the handle up under it to force it to stay that way. Gordy drank several handfuls of water to try to soothe his throat, but then he vomited the water back up into the sink. He spit several times, but could not get the acidic burnout.
He collapsed on the cot, his head pounding from being hungry. Gordy started to drift off, but then sat up. He took the pictures out from his pocket and put them under his back before lying down again.
“Come and get it, stranger.”
Gordy stared up at the closed hatch, wavering on his feet. He could barely keep his eyes open from his growing hunger. The broom handle was gone. So were the pictures he had fallen asleep on top of. He had fallen asleep on his back, but then had rolled to his side some time before waking up again. Maybe I gave them easy access, but what about the broom ? He thought about secret doors and looked around the solid walls.
His hands shook as he drew down the ladder. His legs were watery as he climbed. He crossed over the brooms back in their places and stared at the boxes. The eggs were all regathered. The bed box was closed again. He opened the lid and tears fell as he stared at the sleeve with all the photos stacked back inside neatly.
He thumbed through and found his bicycle, thorns, and beach in the places he expected them to be.
Gordy climbed back down and collapsed against the wall with the hatch still open.
His hands shook with the effort, but finally the pictures tore. He ripped them into smaller pieces. Then, he picked up those pieces and tore them again. He considered eating them, but he was afraid the industrious thief might well gut him for the pieces of the photographs, if it came to that.
Eventually, he slumped to his side and fell asleep.
When he awoke, the room was swept clean and the hatch was closed.
It took him a moment to remember if he had actually eaten them or just thought about it. His head wasn’t clear.
He had no strength left and had to use his weight on the cord to bring the hatch down. The foot of the ladder struck his forehead and he lost vision in one eye. As he sat on his knees, drops of blood speckled the floor beneath him.
He crawled up and back over the boxes. He was able to find the spots for the pictures again pretty quickly. All three were back in place and untorn.
“Demon magic. I am alone here after all.” Gordy snapped his fingers a couple times, but nothing changed for him.
Gordy dug through the boxes until he found an extension cord. He had been seeking rope, but he could be creative when he was properly motivated. He traveled far enough that he found another hatch. He licked his lips and kicked it down open hoping to find a kitchen. It was another room identical to the one he had been using. The blanket was folded at the end of the cot, waiting. He walked back toward the other hatch. It’s the same, but not mine.
Gordy imagined rows and rows of identical hatches stretching out into eternity in both directions.
He used the last of his strength to tie the orange cord off and looped it over a rafter. Gordy managed to create a passable knot around his neck. He wavered at the edge of his hatch.
“A real man uses a gun.”
Yeah, drunk in his damn shed for the kids to find. Some man .
Gordy stepped off and snapped short of the floor by only a few inches. His neck didn’t break, but the knot tightened as he swung in the air. As he slowly blacked out, he wondered if he was incapable of dying and would hang here forever, too weak to free himself.
Gordy roused slowly and more confused than the first morning he had awoken in Hell. The lightbulb at an angle jogged his memory first. He thought he was back at the starting point a few feet down from the hatch past the hot water heaters, but he saw the Easter eggs and the bed box to his left beyond the brooms. He knew the pictures would be inside. He looked up at the rafters and saw the cord was gone above the closed hatch. Demon magic had recoiled it and put it back in its box a few yards in the other direction, he suspected.
Gordy was still hungry, but it was dull like the first day he had arrived. It would grow and he surmised that if he faded away to death, he would wake up back here again to start all over.
He reached the brooms and took one. Gordy jammed the blunt tip of the handle against the wood slats above his head with a dull thud. He struck again and again until the handle snapped. He was going to throw it, but then drove the sharp end into the roof. The wood split and fell in splinters. He saw shingles. Gordy stabbed again and again, raining down blackened crumbs and strips of tar paper. The hole wasn’t wide, but the material kept coming and coming as it piled on the pink insulation. He wanted to break through to daylight, but there was no end to the material. Daylight is outside roofs on Earth, not in Hell .
He considered carving his way into the eggshell walls of his room. Maybe he could dig past wire and pipes into another room. He might find the underside of Hell’s aluminum siding and bust through to Hell’s side yard. Maybe Hell’s neighbors will let me use their phone and call for a ride? I might find old Jesus himself kicked back and watching football since Heaven and Hell are off his mind .
In his heart, Gordy knew he would dig and dig out drywall dust until he passed out and woke up to find the room swept and the wall repaired.
Gordy propped the broken broom back up assuming it and the roof would be healed once whatever qualified for morning was reached again. He went to the pictures and took out the beach picture, but left the bicycle and the thorns.
He returned, kicked down the hatch, and folded it back up once he was below to keep the smell of the attic trapped above. The blanket sat back at the end of the cot just like every other room down the line as far as he wanted to walk, he assumed.
No reason to explore, if it’s all the same and never ends .
Gordy walked up to the sink. He splashed water in his face, but couldn’t bring himself to drink. I just want to stop existing like the atheists said we would . My daddy used to say, people in Hell want ice water. I got water, you old jerk. I need food .
“I want scrambled eggs with cheese and crisp bacon too.”
The plate materialized beside the sink with the bacon and eggs. He snatched it and stared, his jaw hanging open. Gordy crammed the food in his mouth by the fistful, afraid it would vanish as some new form of torture. He gagged on a piece too big for his throat and coughed it back up.
“More bacon.”
It appeared and he dropped the old plate on the floor for the new one.
“Orange juice?”
He took the cup and tilted it back to drink.
“Less pulp?”
The second glass was perfect.
“Warm yeast rolls with melted butter.”
Gordy stacked the plates on the floor and collapsed on the cot.
He opened his eyes some time later and looked over to see the cups and dishes gone. As he stood, he felt the corners of the photo in his pocket and pulled out the beach scene right where he had left it. He stared at the resort of the edge of the frame for some time before returning it to the pocket.
“If it’s in my pocket, you let me keep it. Why?”
With no answer, he went to the toilet and sat down. His eyes opened wide in p
anic and he looked to the wall to see a roll of paper. Gordy sighed and relaxed. That blanket was about to get rough . Once he used the paper, he realized it was higher quality than the cheap stuff he used to tell his wife to buy.
“She’s probably using the insurance money to buy quality, quilted paper now. And landing herself a man that will raise the boys to be sensitive and liberal.”
Things aren’t all bad, I suppose. That’s the first time I’ve had a sit down since I blew my brains out in the shed . “Because I ate.”
He ran back to the sink and stared at the empty shelf. It was all a trick. They teased you with it and now it won’t work.
“Grilled cheese sandwich. American. Two slices. Cut in two triangles. Two pickle slices and bowl of tomato soup mixed with a little milk instead of water.”
The order appeared and he sat on the floor with his back to the wall as he ate slowly.
He stood again and stared at the shelf. “A jack and coke?”
Nothing.
“Light beer at least?”
Empty.
Gordy shook his head and frowned. Come on. Hell is dry? “Sweet tea. Cold.”
The glass appeared. It was a little sweeter than he liked, but he was just happy to eat.
Gordy passed the next few days ordering food, sleeping, showering, and repeating. The plates vanished and he spent a lot of time lying down staring at the hatch. He looked at the beach picture and thought about going to get some of the others or maybe one of the encyclopedias to look at new pictures.
He didn’t want to go up.
His showers started lasting longer.
He sat naked and dripping dry one day. How many days into his stay was he? He’d lost count. Gordy stared up at the rules above the toilet and tried to make sense of them. They seemed important. They probably told the way to earn out, if the demon wasn’t lying. They most likely explained how the food dispenser spot beside the sink worked. If he hadn’t been standing there at the right moment when he lamented about scrambled eggs, he might still not know. He could have wasted away in starvation only to start over again and again.
