Read Page 14

"One day," I said without opening my eyes. "One day I'm actually gonna see this sort of thing coming. I'm going to learn from past fuckups and be proactive and actually see this shit coming. Dammit!"

"Yes, well. Not today."Advertisement

Laura's voice. Double dammit. I was in no hurry to open my eyes, as I knew where we were, but lying on the ground with my eyes closed was, at most, a temporary reprieve. And I guess a vampire queen shouldn't be found in a fetal position while whimpering in fear and telling herself it wasn't cool to suck her thumb.

I opened my eyes. "Most people-when they throw tantrums?-maybe break a vase. You, though. You drag people to Hell."

"It's not a tantrum," Tantrumey McTantrum snapped. "I just got really furious with you and acted without thinking regardless of the consequences."

"Okay, I'll give you that one. Here it comes, all official: zing!" I blinked and sat up. I knew my focus should be on an irked Antichrist but I was distracted by Hell being weird(er).

When I'd been here before, Hell was a waiting room (with all the horror that entails) and a beehive (ditto). The devil had explained, in as bitchy and condescending a manner as possible, that my puny brain couldn't grasp the complexities of another dimension. Because that was what Hell was: something entirely apart from the world, a place that was shaped by Satan's will and determination. Normal rules didn't apply.

My puny brain had wrestled with the sanity-eroding idea of another dimension by coughing up a waiting room, which was perfect. Terrifying, yet relatable, a place shaped by the whims of a power-tripping dermatologist and his only-work-hard-enough-to-not-get-fired staff. Hell had the receptionist desk, thin cheap carpeting, flickering fluorescents, and the out-of-date cooking magazines with all the really good recipes torn out by hostile patients. And several doors that led only to a fire escape and a broken vending machine (dermatologist) or any place in Hell the devil wanted you to see (Hell, obviously).

My puny brain showed me one of the doors led straight into the heart of Hell, an area where you could see everything happening all the time. There were chambers everywhere, thousands of them, so many that even if you couldn't make them out you knew something awful was taking place in each one... which made it a thousand times scarier. It hurt my brain to attempt even a rough count. And even though my puny brain was being shown something relatable, it was still disorienting and scary.

Good try, puny brain. I know you did your best.

That was then. This is now (apologies to S. E. Hinton). No waiting room, no stacks upon stacks of cells. Instead we were in the middle of what felt like a great gray mist, something that enveloped us and only hinted at things we couldn't... quite... see.

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Hell wasn't just different. It was gone. pqdm.com