Inferno 998 words

Hindu Gods, bare-breasted women, a rainbow of birds.

Alison peered closely at yet another statue of a goddess, garlanded in a wreath of intricately-carved flowers.

Margie scowled and rolled her eyes.

“Special price today,” said the salesman, beginning the routine that had become familiar after five days in Bali.

Margie pulled Alison out of the shop.  “Enough! I need a drink, and you need to lighten up.”

Alison sighed; Mags was probably right, but self-medicating on alcohol wasn’t her idea of fun.

They left the shops for a café overlooking the sea.  Sunlight glistened on the water like a thousand, thousand diamonds, and the afternoon light turned the beachgoers into postcard silhouettes.

“This must be what Paradise is like.”  Alison poured iced water and lifted the bottle to salute the sunset.

Margie grunted and sipped her lime-green cocktail.

“Come on, Mags,” said Alison.  “Give it a break!  We’re sisters, remember?”

“You’re so full of shit,” said Margie, slamming her drink down onto the table.

The world exploded.  Fire roared through the restaurant like a tsunami. 

Alison bounced off her chair and hit a wall.  Hard.

Margie landed beside her, whimpering. 

A line of flames burned between them and the sea.  They crawled through a small door. 

The kitchen.

Flames ate the timber walls with crackling hunger, moving towards the hotplates. And the gas cylinder.

A flash of red.

A noise like thunder.

The lights went out.

#

“Aargh!”  A bloody foot lay by Alison’s nose. The rest of the person seemed to be missing. 

She sat up.  “Margie?”

A pile of smoldering fabric heaved, and Margie struggled to her feet. “It’s a bomb!  We’ve got to get out of here!”

“Out of where?” asked Alison, looking around at fields of wind blown grass.  “Where are we?”

“Damned if I know,” said Margie.

A woman strolled up to them.  “Good morning, my dears.  It’s always morning here, have you noticed?”

She looked familiar--grey, rumpled and scholarly.

“Oh, my God,” said Margie.  “It’s Miss Masterson.”

A shiver rippled up Alison’s spine, stirring the hairs on her neck.

“How long has it been, girls?” asked Miss Masterson.  “Ten years?  Fifteen?  Time passes differently here.”

“Where’s here?” asked Alison.

Miss Masterson smiled. “Do you still read the Classics, dear?”

She turned to Margie.  “Have you come to make amends?”

Margie rolled her eyes.  “Not likely!”

The old teacher walked on, her words carrying on the breeze.  “Down the dank moldering paths they went . . .and past the Land of Dreams, and soon they reached the fields of asphodel where the dead, the burnt-out wraiths of mortals make their home."

“That’s too weird!” said Margie.

“I heard she died,” said Alison.  “I think we might be in Hell.”

“Hell as in Heaven and Hell?"

Alison nodded.

“Can’t be!” said Margie, sneering.  “You’re too good to end up in Hell!”

Alison wiped away a tear; the holiday wasn’t working out at all.

“Oh, shit!” said Margie, pointing at something bounding through the grass. 

A lean dog, golden in the sunlight:  Rollo.  A gift from their father just before he killed himself.  “To look after you when I can’t,” he had said.

It had been Margie’s idea to throw Rollo off the same bridge their father had jumped from.  He had taken a long time to hit the water.

Rollo howled like a wolf.  Alison and Margie fled across the killing-field of body parts.

They skidded to a stop in a slick of mud.

“Look at that!” said Margie softly.

In a dip in the field flowed a river, the muddy water roiling and heaving with bodies scrabbling at each other like drowning rats.

“What’s going on?” asked Alison.

“Damned if I know,” said Margie.

One of the men was pointing at them and yelling.

“What’s he saying?”  Alison’s ears still hummed from the blast.

“Damned if I know,” said Margie, for the third time.  She limped towards the river.

“Margie!”

“Father?” cried Margie, walking into the water.

“Go back!” The man--their father?--waved his arms wildly.  “You cannot cross.”

Someone grabbed him from behind and dragged him under.

“Father!”  Margie slipped and sank like a stone.

Alison sat down in the oozing mud.  Had that really happened?

In the river, bodies still leaped and plunged--the angry and sullen condemned to the Styx, fighting each other in wrath for eternity.

“Oh, Mags!”  Tears made tracks in the mud on Alison’s face.  “What’s my place in Hell?  The whirling flight of the romantics?  Pride?”  She shivered, although the sun still shone in a cloudless sky. 

“I will not be proud any more.  I’m sorry Margie burned Miss Masterson‘s books.  I’m sorry I let her kill Rollo.  I’m sorry we didn’t make Father happy.  I swear I’ll make amends.”

Someone waded out of the river.  It wasn’t Margie.

“You have sworn on the sacred river,” said the man.  He seemed to be wearing a helmet and winged sandals, but Alison no longer trusted her eyes.  “You have repented.  An oath sworn on the River Styx is binding.”

Alison nodded.  “Can Margie come back now?”

The sun flared, and she fell into a bottomless pit.

#

A shadow blocked the light.

“Margie?”

“My name’s Jane, dear.  I’m a volunteer.  Were you with Margie when the bomb went off?”

“Bomb?” 

Fire and pain. 

Alison nodded.  It made her head throb.

#

Alison’s mother arrived two days later, tear-stained and pale. 

“They can’t find Margie,” she said.  “I always thought she wanted to be with her father.  Is that an awful thing to say?”

Alison sighed, a sound like wind blowing through grass.  “She was so angry.  I guess we all were, but she was so . . .”

“Destructive?” suggested her mother.

Alison nodded.  “Sometimes it's easier to be angry than to forgive yourself and go on.”

Her mother smiled sadly.  “Wise words, Ali.  Very wise words.”  She closed her eyes, as if praying.  “I hope she finds him.”

“I’m sure she has,” said Alison quietly.