Sweet Pandemonium

Chapter 4

“You can retire in Hell?”


Ire’s brow furrowed as she looked at Maria. “What?”


“You said you want to retire by the Styx for two thousand years. I mean, there’s a lot to unpackage in that statement, but first, how do you retire in Hell?”


Ire licked her teeth behind her lips. “It’s Maria, right?”


“Right.”


“Shut up Maria. For just two minutes, not a fucking word. Please and thank you.” Maria was clearly offended, but she nodded and mimed the action of zipping her lips. But even in the new silence, Ire barely knew where to begin. For centuries, she had pestered the blind prophet with that question, each time he turned her away. Through that time they’d found something like respect for each other - an incredibly rare thing among Hell’s denizens - but Ire had dropped the subject decades ago and had focused on going through eternity without giving a shit. She shook her head at nothing, and ran her fingers through her long, ash blonde hair. “Alright Terry,” Ire said with a small nod. “Please. Whenever you’re ready.”


Terry smiled as he stirred the red fluid in the bowl, bringing it to a simmer. Once he did, he flicked the burner off and stirred it slowly with a ladle. “...is that blood?” Maria interrupted with a nervous glance at Ire, expecting an outburst of some kind.


Terry didn’t respond immediately, absorbed in his simple action. When he did, it was as though through a trance: “Yes. Blood taken from one still living. Very difficult to come by in this place of the forever dying.”


Maria whistled softly. “That is so metal.”


Ire glanced sideways at her. She was obviously fresh off Charon’s boat, yet she showed no trace of the existential terror nor did she seem like a satanist; her excitement was as plain as the tattoos on her arms. Ire turned her head at an angle to see them. The left shoulder had a portrait of young Elvis singing into a microphone. Below him were a multicolored bus, a bouquet of roses, a winding rattlesnake, an open book with the words “[write your own line here]” on the pages. Oddest of all was on the back of her hand, a black butterfly with a white star on its back. There was no sense in the pattern that Ire could see, though she searched hard for one as Terry sang a soft and ancient song, then cupped his hands into the hot blood and drank it, palmful by palmful. As he lifted the bowl and polished the rest off, Maria glanced over at Ire, who quickly pretended to look somewhere else.


The old man set the bowl down softly, head bowed. The silence yawned open.


Maria shot another nervous glance at Ire. “...now what?”


“We wait until he speaks.” Maria nodded and walked in small circle around the room stopping to look out the massive window again at the Nephilim. Ire sat on the couch and flipped on Army of Nun again. The minutes passed, and Terry remained frozen before his bowl and burner. Out in the kitchen, Hanan was watching a video on his phone; it sounded like Bill Hearst giving one of his smug opinion pieces on how the latest generation of denizens was the laziest, most entitled, and most pathetic generation in human history.


Terry began to snore softly, still standing in place.


Maria raised an eyebrow and her voice rose to an impossibly high pitch: “Um… I thought receiving a prophecy would be a little more exciting.”


“Dude! He’s an oracle, not a performance artist.” Ire stood up from her chair to give the old man a shove. A volcano just across the valley belched out a column of smoke and a cheer from the Nephilim washed over their mountain top. Terry awoke with a shout and rubbed his eyes.


“Bacchus piss,” he sighed. “You two had better have a seat.” He waited for them to obey, than sat down himself and clapped his sweating hands to his knees. “Well… to start with… Maria, you’re not dead.”


The Nephilim started a heavy rhythm on their drums, the sound so deep and loud that they thundered all the way up the slope.


“What?” Maria stood up with a look of alarm. “I’m not…? Then how am I here? Where’d my body go?”


“From what I can tell, you hang between life and death, your body likely in a coma. There is a chance for you to return to that body, and live again. Ire, should you help Maria in her task, you too shall journey to the world of the living.”


“How awesome is that!?” Maria raised her hand to high-five Ire. The long-damned woman didn’t return it.


“What’s the catch?”


Terry combed his fingers through his beard. He started to speak several times, each time the words died half formed in his mouth. Ire had never seen the prophet so troubled, and she wondered what calamities had cut through his dreams. “You have to take a tour through Hell,” he finished.


“Okay,” Maria nodded with excitement. “I’ve read this before: Living person with an existential crises is transported to Hell, is guided by a damned soul through some graphic stuff,  learns a lesson, gets lifted out! I’m guessing Ire…” she stopped in mid-sentence and turned to her new guide. “Random question: is that short for something? Like Irene?”


“Nope.”


“Oh… well I’m guessing she’ll be the one showing me around?”


Terry’s clouded eyes were fixed above them towards the ceiling. “She would play the Virgil to your Dante, yes.”


Ire’s jaw clenched. “Hell is kinda big, Terry. I don’t think that tour would ever end…”


“You’re absolutely right, of course,” he laughed nervously. “Your primary concern would be with reaching the Devil on his throne.”


“...In Pandemonium?”


“Correct.” Terry rubbed his palms together. He could no doubt sense Ire’s growing anger. “I realize it’s not a place mortals are meant to go…”


“Maria, could you excuse us a moment?”


The young woman’s joy instantly dissolved and she glanced between Terry and Ire with bewilderment. Down below in the valley, great feasting horns sounded and the Nephilim cheered once again. “I mean, if this is our only shot out…”


“Now.”


Maria nodded and left, shutting the door quietly behind. Terry’s blind eyes found Ire as she sat in her chair. “It is the only way Ire,” he said quietly.


Ire’s face grew hot. “Let me get this straight... We make the journey to Pandemonium—which would be really fucking hard, by the way—we reach the throne of the Great Morning Star... and then what? We’re supposed to have our ‘Hallelujah, come to Jesus’ moment?”


Terry shifted in his seat. “Perhaps you’ll be reincarnated. That could happen, right?”


Ire jumped from the couch and stormed towards the door.


Terry stood, both of his knees cracking loudly. “All these ages you’ve pestered me for answers. Now I finally have one for you, and you piss on it just like that?”


Ire jabbed a finger back the way Maria had gone. “She doesn’t belong here Terry, you saw her! She’s being used as a sacrificial lamb to get to me. And they would send someone named ‘Maria.’ Fuck, they never could be subtle!”


“Please don’t shout,” Terry begged with upraised hands. “I won’t pretend to know the method behind the madness…”


“It’s obviously going to be conditional, Terry, I can read between the lines! Their fishing for an apology, and they’re not getting one.”


Terry threw his hands in the air exasperatedly and shuffled up from his chair. “I have been doing this for thousands of years, you understand that? All through the ages, heroes and scholars and statesmen have all braved the odds to see Old Tiresias. I’m supposed to be the one with all the answers. Devil only knows how many have come to me asking how to leave this place. All of them have left broken hearted.’ He pressed his hands against the wide window as though to push through it, and he bowed his head. To his sightless eyes, the glass of the window must have seemed nothing more than the side of a fishbowl. When he continued, his voice wavered as though he


“This morning, the answer stumbled, quite terrified, onto my doorstep. This path is open only to you and her. You must guard her through the Circles of Hell. You must take her to see the Devil in Their unspeakable city. Beyond that, I know nothing, least of all what will happen in the end. But I do know, if you don’t do this, you and that poor girl will be doomed to wander these Circles forever.”


Ire bit her lip, her anger cooling into something like fear. “Literal eternity?”


“Ten trillion trillion years would hardly be the start; there will be no second chance. Perhaps you would rather brave that sentence then risk a brush with righteousness. Perhaps you would even deserve it. But you said it yourself: Maria does not belong here.”


Ire had some choice nihilistic remarks to that statement, but an image popped into her head: an actual beach under a blue sky, a beach with smooth sand that ran between her toes, and cold ocean water that tickled her ankles. It would be lovely to have something like that.


Terry gave a small smile, her hesitation clear even to him. “If some pompous Archangel appears at the end and demands you convert, you can always say no. In the meantime, what else to you have to do?”





She and Terry both emerged to see Maria quietly weeping in her chair, her hands over her face. Hanan leaned over the table, chin in hand, eyebrows raised at the two of them. “I’m sorry… I’m not usually like this…” Maria sniffled and wiped her face.


“We were having a fun time,” he said dryly.


“But there was so much I was going to do! I’m such a fucking idiot…”


“Please don’t talk like that,” Hanan groaned without a trace of sympathy.


Ire shoved her hands in her pockets. She did not look forward to a long journey filled with self-pity, regret, and tissues. She rolled her eyes at Terry, who nudged her forward. Ire gritted her teeth, and looked at Hanan. There really was no other choice. “Go easy on her, all right? Shit, I remember when Nebuchadnezzar reset you with a spear up your rectum. You went mute for months.”


Hanan blanched. “We were never going to talk about that again!”


“What happened?” Maria’s eyes went wide.


“Look,” Ire said as she typed a message into her phone. “I know it’s hard to adjust when you’re new to Hell. So maybe we can explain how everything works down here. Hanan actually lives and works down the other side of the mountain. Maybe we can show you around and walk you through everything.” She finished her message and set the phone down by Maria, careful to leave the screen on. Maria glanced at it and read the message: Don’t tell ANYONE you’re not dead or where we’re going. EVER. Maria’s quickly looked away and choked down a desperate laugh.


Hanan didn’t notice. In the centuries that he’d known Ire, he had never seen her so polite. He stared dumbstruck a moment then shot Maria a suspicious glance. “I’d be happy to make some tea.”


“And maybe we can pick your brain on what the living world is like these days.” Ire glanced at Terry, who gave the statement an almost imperceptible nod. It was usually best to go with the flow when trying to fulfill a prophecy, unless it expressly forbid something.


“Then it’s time for us to head down.” Hanan slapped the paper down on the table and drew out a comb as he stood, giving his hair a quick run through to make sure it was in place.


“Tiresias, I’ll be sending your ten o’clock appointment up shortly. You’ll be ready, I trust?”


He snorted. “Can I really say no?”


Hanan looked wounded. “We’re nothing if not flexible! If you need an extra hour or two, just say the word!”


“Send them up whenever you like,” Terry snorted, then turned to Ire. For a moment, she could swear his clouded eyes were staring directly at her. “May we never meet again.”


Maria stared at the old man, no doubt thinking the comment unforgivably rude. Yet she whirled around in shock as Hanan gave a small smile and bowed his head. “May we never meet again.”


“May we never meet again,” Ire said as well, unable to hide the sadness in her voice.


Terry turned away and slowly felt his way back towards his study door. Hanan ushered Maria out, and waited for Ire to follow. But Ire stayed and watched the old prophet, until he disappeared behind his door.