Stories
Hades’ suburbs. The biggest planned community I’d ever seen. Tract houses in the millions, packed together so close neighbors could reach out their windows and shake hands. Everyone had the same floor plan. I just sat there, looking out the window, watching it all pass by. My train could have been going in circles, though it seemed we were chugging straight ahead. I’d just keep getting off at each stop and taking a look around. Maybe I’d solve the riddle of how to get out of Hades? Maybe I wouldn’t. Seeing Gina again wasn’t pleasant. Somehow she’d managed to win a ticket to suburbia. I wasn’t sure her suicide was her condemnation’s culprit. Adam had said there were 3 Torments in Hades, and which one you got depended on whether your Vice was Idleness, Rigidity, or Greed. Who knows which one was hers? Maybe she had all of them? She was sitting there in the tub all day, hogging all the bloody bathwater and razorblades, bitching and complaining about the same shit over and over again. I could see how all the Vices were possibly manifest in her eternal Torment. Let her be friends of Brutus, Judas, and Cassius.
The train arrived at the next platform. I jumped off. The conductor waved goodbye and I waved back. Next thing I was back on the sidewalks, counting my steps, 1,2,3,1,2,3, “don’t step on a crack…”
When the time felt right, I broke the flow, stepped on a crack, and looked up to find myself standing in front of Larry’s old mobile home. I knew I could walk in the door any time I wanted, so I didn’t knock. The rusty screen door slammed shut behind me. It was dark and cool inside, the blinds were all closed, and a large screen television in the corner was the only source of light. When my eyes adjusted, I could make out Larry’s giant form. There he was, all 300lbs of him, reclined and snoring, bare feet up, a padded easy chair serving as his bed.
“Larry?”
“Eh? Snort! Grunt!”
By lunging forward on the springs and kicking at the footrest with his heels, Larry half sat up and looked at me with surprise, but the surprise quickly turned into a gap-toothed smile on his big, round face.
“Johnny!”
“Larry, what the Hell are you doing here?”
“Hell if I know. But before we hug and kiss, go get us a beer out of the fridge.”
I went to the kitchen and came back with two cold ones. Larry didn’t get out of his chair to hug me. I bent over and put my arms around his mass while he pounded my back with his palms. We cracked our beers and smacked the aluminum together in toast.
“Go grab that folding chair ‘gainst the wall and pull it on up!”
I unfolded and pulled the chair up, sat down, and took a swig. Larry started talking, and he didn’t give me a chance to say a thing. It had likely been a long time since he’d had company, so I let him talk. He went on and on about the movies, shows, and standup routines he’d been watching on the comedy channel. I pretended to listen as I remembered the events surrounding Larry’s death. When he was 27, his heart began failing – something about an enlarged heart. When he was 28, he had a heart transplant. When he was 29, his new heart failed and he died. I’d known Larry since grade school. I was one of his pallbearers. He was a good old boy that lived in the country, wore overalls around his big belly, drove a beat up Ford pickup, and was always filling the truck’s bed with empty beer cans. I helped with the task. As he drove, and we drank, we’d throw the empties out the truck’s rear, sliding window. They’d usually land in the bed with the other cans, but sometimes they’d jump out onto the highway and end up rolling into a ditch. Larry never worked any job more than a month, and he’d dropped out of high school. Half the time his utilities were shut off. His grandfather had died had left him with the mobile home and pickup. The only thing that stopped Larry’s nonstop talking was the start of a comedy channel sitcom.
“Don’t mean to be rude, but I gotta watch this. You’ll like it. Go get us round 2.”
I didn’t find the sitcom funny. It was something about the life and times of some white guy with an afro.
Larry found it quite funny. Every other line or so, he’d let out a booming laugh.
“Hahaha! Hahaha! Hahaha!”
And he’d laugh some more.
“Hahaha! Hahaha! Hahaha!”
And some more.
“Hahaha! Hahaha! Hahaha!”
It was horrifying. Though we were watching comedy, the whole scene was something out of Hitchcock, or the Twilight Zone. When commercials came, I went to the refrigerator for more beer, and while I did so I had a chance to ask a few questions.
“Larry, don’t you want to get out of here?” I wasn’t sure if he knew he was dead, so I said “here” instead of “Hades.”
“Hell no. This is where I live.”
“What do you do all day?”
“I don’t have to do nothin’. One day I was sitting here watching my shows and was all bummed out about the empty fridge, but I got up and looked in it hoping something was there anyway. And wouldn’t you know it! It was full of food and beer! I ain’t goin’ nowhere. Ever!”
“Who’s been filling the fridge?”
“Hell if I know, but he’s a pal of mine. Sometimes I drink all the beer and munch down all the eats, and then I take a nap. When I wake up, the damn place is cleaned up. Not an empty is on the floor where I throw ‘em, and the fridge is all full again.”
“Don’t look a gift horse in the mouth.”
“You can say that again! And let me tell you. Since all this good stuff has been happening, I haven’t been constipated once and nobody’s shut off the water or electric.”
“You don’t want to go anywhere with me, I take it?”
“Like where?”
“To the train.”
“Nobody rides that train. I wouldn’t if I was you. Besides, I think I’m too fat to fit through the door.”
The commercial break ended and the sitcom about the white guy with the afro came back on.
Larry found it quite funny. Every other line or so, he’d let out a booming laugh.
“Hahaha! Hahaha! Hahaha!”
And he’d laugh some more.
“Hahaha! Hahaha! Hahaha!”
And some more.
“Hahaha! Hahaha! Hahaha!”
I stood up and walked out the door without saying a thing. I don’t think Larry realized, or cared, that I left without saying goodbye. He had comedy channel sitcoms, beer and food, air conditioning, and never had trouble taking a shit.
I hopped off the train. From behind rows of small windows, the conductor waved goodbye. I waved back. The train belched smoke, began pulling its cars up the track, and then chugged away into the greater depths of Hades’ tract housing. Still wearing nothing but a canvass sack, I took the stairs off the platform and headed into the suburbs.
Block after block I walked, and still the cramped tract houses all looked the same. It was row after row of continual sameness. At least the blue sky offered my bare back warm sunlight. Block after block I walked, and I just kept walking. Every once in a while I’d turn a corner or cross a street, or look up to see the same front yards and houses. Mostly, I just looked down at the sidewalk and watched my feet taking 3 steps on each concrete slab before stepping over a crack and taking another 3 steps, over and over. There was something to getting into the rhythm of walking, 1,2,3 and 1,2,3 and 1,2,3. With my steps I began saying aloud, “Don’t step on a crack or you’ll break your mother’s back.” 3 syllables per slab, 4 slabs each time I said a whole line. Rhythm. That was it! 1,2,3, “Don’t step on,” 1,2,3, “a crack or,” 1,2,3, “you’ll break your,” 1,2,3, “moth-ers back.” 1,2,3,1,2,3,1,2,3… I realized it was Rhythm! 1,2,3,1,2,3… Swim with the currents! Don’t seek answers, but find questions. Stay in motion and the stage curtain will open. Your eyes will be filled with light. I stopped in my tracks and stepped on a crack. When I looked up from my feet, I was standing in front of a familiar house. It was just like the one I’d lived in with my 2nd wife.
It was so familiar I felt as if I’d traveled back in time, as if I were returning home from work like so many times before. Maybe I really was? The only indication to the contrary was that I was wearing nothing but a canvass sack and bare feet, not a suit and polished wing tips.
I opened the front door. There was my old denim jacket hanging on the coat rack. The familiar silver mirror set in a wrought iron frame was hanging on the foyer wall. Stairs lead up to where I knew I’d find her. My body tensed with anxiety. Oh god, I don’t want to go through this again… My last encounter with Gina had been a horrible one. The last time I saw her. I could sense I was reliving that encounter.
“Johnny! Come on up! I’m in the bathtub!” her voice carried from upstairs.
I sighed with relief when I heard her voice. She sounded happy. Could she really be happy? She sounded like she was glad I was home. Had she decided to love me again?
Old feelings of love flooded my heart and I suddenly felt light and free again. I had loved her. In an instant, I suddenly loved her once more.
“Johnny! Get up here!”
I darted up the stairs, ran down the hall, into the master bedroom, and through the open bathroom door. There she was in the bathtub, just like she had been the last time I’d seen her. She was sitting in tepid water mixed with dark blood. Her wrists were slashed open, and an open package of razor blades lay on the floor beside the tub. I suddenly felt heavy and chained again, cursed with old feelings of grief and guilt.
She wasn’t smiling, as usual, but this time she was alive. Gina’s blue eyes were piercing me with hatred. By her look, I realized she’d feigned her tone of voice to lure me up the stairs, to find her bathing in blood.
“You did this to me!” she accused.
“You cut your own wrists,” I retorted, and in so doing I was surprised how quickly my old combative attitude returned.
“You were never there for me.”
“All you ever did was complain, nag, and bitch.”
“You and all your friends, the drinking, the casino.”
“I liked being happy.”
“That isn’t what life is about. Being happy. Staying away from me because you couldn’t stand how I was or how I felt. For you being happy was being irresponsible, refusing to see things the way they really are, and not being able to understand me.
“We can all choose to be happy. You just wouldn’t ever try. So I gave up.”
“There were too many problems to be happy! How could you have treated me the way you did, when I was suffering so much?”
“What do you expect? I grew tired of all the bullshit, the depression, the constant therapy sessions, the complaining, nagging, and bitching. I could have lived with a year or 2 of it, but you just wouldn’t give up being miserable and blaming me for all of it.”
“It was all because of you!”
“I tried and tried. Nothing I ever did was good enough. I could never change enough. I never showed enough empathy. I couldn’t understand. It was too much!”
“You never listened. You never cared!”
“Like I told you, I couldn’t live with the complaining, nagging, and bitching. The world was nothing but a bad place for you. You wanted me to live in it with you and accept it. Sorry. I couldn’t. Sorry. I wouldn’t. Sorry. I won’t. I’m going to leave you to your own misery, again. There’s too much of it for me here. I’m getting back on the train.”
“You aren’t going anywhere this time!”
“Why not?”
“We have to talk.”
“About what?”
“Our problems. Why you make me so depressed and miserable. Why you made me kill myself.”
“I don’t have any problems, and I never made you do or feel anything.”
“Yes you did! You need to take responsibility!”
“I’m leaving.”
“Just like you did last time?”
“Yes.”
“You can’t leave me! You can’t leave this place! No one can!”
I turned away, walked down the steps, and out the front door. All the while she was screaming this and that. None of it mattered. Issues. Problems. Incurable unhappiness. The misery I had caused. Everything was my fault.
As I headed back to the train platform, the guilt and grief over Gina’s suicide left me. I no longer felt bad about finding her dead in the bathtub, floating in her blood. I’d done the right thing by just calling 911, giving a statement to the police, packing a suitcase, throwing it in the car and driving away. Though I’d ended up with a foreclosure on my credit report, I didn’t care. A mortgage just ties a man down. I’m not sure who took care of Gina’s funeral, or if she even had one.
I sat on a bench and waited for the train to come. I remembered the Gina I’d fallen in love with, the one I’d known before Gina that had fallen apart.
Before she’d changed, there was a time we’d hiked deep into a thick forest of Redwood trees. We had a blanket and a basket filled with bread, wine, cheese, and apples. It was chilly beneath the lofty canopy – not at all accommodating for a picnic, but to our joy we discovered a clearing filled with sunlight and warmth. We threw the blanket down, rolled around in one-another’s arms, laughed, and got drunk on wine. While making love we spotted a stag and a doe in the tree-line shadows. They were watching us, and we them, and we were mimicking one-another’s erotic motions.
I’ll always love the Gina I first met. Somehow she’d died long before I found her body and blood in a bathtub.
Some of us give up the journey. Some of us stay a while and get back on the train.
The train chugged along for what seemed many hours. Through the windows an endless array of tract houses flashed past, and kept flashing past. Was Hades nothing but an endless suburb? Who’d have thought? What was I supposed to do here? You can just walk out of the place, but no one ever has, I’d been told. You can’t get off track because the journey through Hades is one way, it had been said. Adam’s talk of the torment found here – the vices. Or were they virtues instead of vices here, as the conductor suggested? What was I supposed to do with them? I wasn’t seeking any torment. Oh, what the hell. I was in Hades now, and I had to deal with it. I’d done it to myself by falling for a snake. I’d stepped out of permanent stone and into temporal flesh and sand just for a bottle of Chardonnay and a girl in a sundress with no underpants. Come to think of it, that wasn’t why I was in Hades. That girl and the wine were the lure, not the cause of my being here. The sin, or the injustice for which I was suffering, at least according to the snake, had something to do with my being a pillar for so long. I had held up the flux and chaos for everyone else by just standing there, a pillar in the desert, watching the seasons turn with every slow blink of eye. So, if I accepted all I’d been told as truth, I was in Hades because I’d been changeless too long. Was I somehow being punished for having taken a taste of immortality? The tree in the garden is forbidden for a reason, be the tempting fruit a chance to turn to stone, to sip of Chardonnay, or to have lust with a snake. Partake of the fruit and you just might be in for a ride through Hades’ suburbs. Or was it the shrooms, absinthe, or hashish lollipops? If only I’d never tumbled off the bridge and into the water. Still, I was glad for it. Sometimes you have to seek the glimmer in the darkness, and that is the beauty in fireflies. Ever since meeting Vatsulu, I’d been on quite an adventure. It was a welcome change of pace. Who else gets to swim with a fish with a man’s face, be swallowed by a whale and escape from it by breathing through a mermaid’s tit? How often do we get the chance to stand as a pillar in the desert for more than a thousand years, take instruction from a talking skeleton, sleep with a snake in a sundress, or plummet into Hades wearing nothing but a canvas sack? Oh yeah, and the barkeep’s whiskey was free of charge. How often are the drinks free in any tavern? Change and flux, the chaos of it all, we have been and will be all things, dogs, cats, men, women, snakes, and foul again. Seek not the answers but the questions. The vices… the virtues… eternal torment. Ride the train. Wait for nightfall. Catch the fireflies and put them in a jar to light the way.
Someone was shaking me. “Sir, sir! Wake up! We have arrived at the first stop.”
“Er, eh… what?” I’d fallen asleep and the conductor had his hand on my shoulder.
“We’ve been stopped here for a while, and it’s about time to depart. Don’t you want to get off at your first stop? Why have you just been sitting here, sleeping? Your ticket will still be good when you want to board again.”
I looked out the window. “It looks like the same place. Haven’t we gone anywhere? All the houses and streets still look the same.”
“Johnny, it’s all a matter of perception. I understand where you are from the sun rises and falls over and over again. The days go from Monday through Sunday over and over again. Every two weeks you receive a paycheck for sitting at a desk and doing the same thing you did to get the previous paycheck, and the one before that. I hear you have to pay the same bills every month: mortgage, utilities, cable television, water, and trash. I can’t fathom how you can tell one day from the next where you’re from. I think it is kind of the same thing for you, being a stranger here. Just how you see nothing but sameness in my world, I see the same thing in yours. Everything really is different here, even if it looks the same as everything else from the outside. It all depends on how you look at it, or maybe it is how you live it.”
I scratched my head. “O.k., so if I get off at this stop, and take a look around, I’ll start noticing everything isn’t the same?”
“Probably not at first,” grinned the conductor. “You need to start by looking into things.”
“Oh, come on, please not another riddle!”
“Try knocking on a door or two.”
“Who will answer?”
“It can be anyone you have known that has died.”
“Everyone here is dead?”
“Yes.”
“Even me?”
“Some questions shouldn’t be asked, Johnny.”
“Then this really is the land of the dead?”
“It is Hades.”
“And no one has ever left it?”
“Nope.”
“What about Lazarus?”
The train conductor grimaced and his silence spoke clearly. Seek questions. Don’t ask them.
Again I was falling into the blackness, but this time it was because I’d leapt back into it. As I dropped, the spirits of the dead once more came swirling around me,
“Hey buddy, got a cigarette?” asked a bum.
“Sir, can I have a puppy?” inquired a small child.
“Can you show me the way to Toledo?”
“Sorry, can’t help you, but do you have a parachute I can borrow?” I smirked to each in reply, and this caused each of them to offer sad faces and swirl away.
To kill the time during this long drop, I started doing summersaults and cartwheels. I practiced spinning like a top. Sometimes I sang children’s lullabies, and at others I found my body still, my mouth quiet, my mind pondering this and that. What if I’d gone to school to become a chiropractor instead of a lawyer? What if I’d married that accountant girl back when I was 23, had a few kids, and a house in the suburbs? What if I’d been a religious man? What if I hadn’t lost so many friends over the years as a result of getting so outrageously drunk at so many parties? Falling into Hades really gave me time to think.
Once I’d tormented myself with enough “what ifs” and “why did Is,” the darkness began to dissipate and light appeared. It became brighter and brighter, and blue, as if I was falling into the sky. Fluffy clouds emerged and I fell through them. I dropped straight past birds. I saw pastel and striped hot air balloons sailing about. Hades? This couldn’t be Hades. Now I was really confused. I’d had enough. I didn’t need any more adventure or any more tests. I should have drowned long ago, when I fell off the bridge. Don’t resuscitate me. This was too much and I was tired of it all. When the suburbs and lush parks appeared below, at the speed I was going I was satisfied I’d land hard enough to splatter. Being ready for the end, I crossed my arms in resignation, let out a sigh, and closed my eyes. It had been a good life… I’d seen and done a few things with it, though not nearly enough, but who dies satisfied? All our works are dirty rags, eh?
Just as I had offered my resignation and exhaled, I was snatched at the elbows. I abruptly stopped midair and started floating. What now? I opened my eyes to find my mood suddenly and positively changed. What appeared to be 2 angels had taken hold of me. They were slender, smiling, and beautiful, with feathered wings, bare breasts, and were wearing diamond-studded g-strings. Each wore a peacock’s plume on her head. All right, Adam, I’m game for another test. Just one more! How quickly a couple pair of tits can divert us from suicide.
The plumed girls didn’t say a thing. They just kept smiling and flapping their wings. Gradually the ground grew nearer. We flew over tract after tract of suburb housing, thousands of little rooftops that all looked the same. A master-planned community stretching to the horizon in every direction, and the only things breaking the monotony of the dense, checkered patterns were lush green parks and lakes. But there was something peculiar about the orderliness of it all. Nothing was unique. That was it. Even the parks and lakes were identical. In each park, children were playing kickball and dogs were chasing Frisbees. In each lake, couples were floating along in kick-paddle boats. The sight of it all gave me the same feeling as listening to a broken record skip and play the same line over and over again.
One of the winged girls tapped me on the shoulder and pointed. Up ahead, the monotony of the track housing, parks, and lakes broke. We were approaching a small train depot. An old black steam engine was idling next to the platform and choking out smoke. When we got closer, I could see a train conductor standing there, waiting. The girls put me down in front of him, giggled to one another, and fluttered away.
“Welcome to Hades, Johnny.”
“You know my name too? I should have guessed.”
“I do keep track of all the passengers,” he winked.
“This is Hades?”
“Sure is, at least the suburbs of it.”
“I thought it was a dark place filled with ghouls and tortured souls.”
“Look around you. That’s exactly what this place is – a dark place filled with ghouls and tortured souls.”
“Then where are the pits of flesh and lakes of ale?”
“My goodness, Johnny, if you are looking to find any of that, I’m terribly sorry to tell you you’ve come to the wrong place. You aren’t looking for Hades. You’re looking for Paradise.”
“Let me guess. Your train won’t take me there?”
“Nope. Sorry to disappoint you. Do you have any other destination in mind? I just may have a ticket.”
I scratched my head. Let’s see, I thought. Adam said something about vices. The vices must be part of the riddle.
“Where do I go to confront the vices?”
“Vices?”
“Yeah, you know, Idleness, Rigidity, and Greed.”
“Oh goodness. Johnny, in Hades, these vices you speak of are the virtues. And I’m not sure there are three virtues. There may only be one,” winked the conductor.
“Let me guess. Here darkness is light, so vices are virtues. Everything is upside down. One big tangled cluster fuck.”
“Well, not exactly, but don’t you worry my green friend. You have an eternity to seek your answers now.”
“I was taught to seek questions, not answers. Don’t you know Vatsulu and Adam?”
The train conductor offered a big smile, and his silence told me I wasn’t going to get any more out of him.
“Alright, I’ll take a ticket. What are my options? Do you have a schedule?”
“You don’t need one. The train only goes one way, and with one ticket you can get off at any stop and stay as long as you want. You can get back on the train and keep going whenever you decide the time is right.”
“What’s at the first stop?”
“It is a different place for each person.”
Shit. Hades. A one-way street, or should I say train track? It is tailor made for each of us, probably to make sure the marginal utility of our pain is maximized with every step we take into the mire. All you have to do is walk out of the place, but no one ever has. Maybe no one ever will, but fuck it. I’d give it a try just to take pride in knowing I did my best to defy Orcus.
I held up a finger. “One ticket. I’m getting the hell out of here.”
Hades’ Gates are not guarded. You won’t find Cerberus, a hydra, or a band of skeleton warriors trying to stop you from getting into the place. In fact, there are no obstructions or locked gates to Hades. There are no barriers to entering the Mouth of Hell. You just walk right in. Everyone is welcome, living or dead, though there is only one place where the living may enter, and only a guide can get you there. My guide, as you have seen, was the scorpion. Funny I call him a guide. After all, he did throw me into a canvass sack, tie it shut, and carry me a distance before dropping me off at the entryway. I suppose it doesn’t matter whether we make it to Hell through a guide or via a courier. What is important is that we make it there.
I tied the canvass sack’s string around my waist, took a few breaths, got down on my hands and knees, and crawled into the little hole in the ground. There was not enough room to stand, so I had to keep crawling. An eerie, gray light somehow glowed from the jagged walls of the twisting passageway, so I was just able to see which direction to clamber. It was so cold, my teeth were chattering and I couldn’t feel my hands, feet, lips, or ears, but I kept going. It seemed I was slowly descending, and I kept going. If I had to guess, I crawled nearly a mile into the earth before finding what appeared to be an end to the tunnel. In the ground I discovered a little wooden trapdoor. I bounced on it, tried to pry it open with my fingers, knocked on it to see if someone might open it from below. Nothing. Finally, I found a little wire loop sticking out of the wall and gave it a pull.
The trapdoor opened!
I dropped straight into nothingness, pure black nothingness. I fell. I fell for a long time. I fell. At first, the horror of suddenly plummeting into a pit with no bottom in sight, an abyss, made me shut my eyes tight and yell until all my air was spent. Something about having my stomach thrown into my throat made it impossible to refrain from screaming as loud as I could, like a girl, over and over again. At some point I pissed and shit in the canvass sack I was wearing. It was quite a drop. It was quite a dump. I tumbled, and screamed, tumbled and screamed.
Eventually, I realized how ridiculous I was being, so I came to my senses, straightened out, and opened my eyes.
All around me, what appeared to be souls of the dead were swirling. They were holding out their hands to me in supplication. I had always been afraid of ghosts, but it is amazing how you overcome your fear of everything else once you have come to terms with the fact you are freefalling to your death in an abyss.
“Hey buddy,” said a fat man in a panama hat, “do you have anything to eat?”
“I want my daughter back! I was young when I gave her away! Please give her back to me! Please!” cried an old woman.
“He went to prison because I lied! I’m the one who stole the money!” confessed a man in a fancy suit.
“Sorry, I can’t help any of you. All I have is shit in my pants, and regrets I just pulled the wrong wire.”
The desperate souls made sour faces and abandoned me. I kept falling.
I don’t know if I fell for days or weeks, but I had long given up hope of splattering at the bottom when a powerful gust of wind swept me up and began carrying me somewhere. When I looked down, I discovered my body was in the grasp of a monstrous, ethereal hand. After being carried a short way, a little wooden tavern came into view in the distance. It was hovering midair in the abyss, among the absolute darkness coming from every direction. Through open windows and the swiveling doors, a warm fire glowed. The hand flew me to the entrance. The swiveling doors flew open, and I was gently put down on the welcome mat. The hand disappeared.
“God damn! What’s that smell?” demanded the bartender. Like the best bartenders, he was a surly man, balding, and had a distinctly protruding belly that stretched against his greasy, white apron.
I looked around, and discovered I was the only other person there.
“Sorry. I shit in my pants.”
“What the hell you do that for?”
“I fell into this hole and it scared the shit out of me.”
The bartender grinned to his bushy sideburns. “I’d shit too if I fell so far. Tell you what,” he pointed a fat finger, “through that door is the washroom. Go wash up. Rinse out that damn sack you’re wearing and hang it by the fire to dry. I have a clean apron for you. I wouldn’t leave here with only an apron on though, so stay a while. Have a few drinks. As you can imagine, in Hades you won’t be a virgin long if you’re running around with your bare ass showing.”
I returned wearing an apron and smelling of lye soap.
“I’d ask you your drink, but here we only serve various devils’ brews you ain’t never heard of and can’t say,” explained the barkeep.
“What do you recommend?”
“Depends on what you need.”
“I need to get out of here.”
“There ain’t no drink for that.”
“Then how do I get out of here?”
“You just have to fall to the bottom, get up, and start walking. There’s only one way in and one way out. There’s no way to get lost, and no one is going to stop you from leaving this damned hole. Just remember, along the way there will be a lot of places where you’ll want to set up camp and stay forever, like at the ale lakes, the shroom fields, or one of the pits of flesh.”
“You gotta be kidding me! Ale lakes, shroom fields, and flesh pits?”
“I’m kidding,” winked the bartender after a pause. “But there are powerful temptations here, and no one has ever turned his back on all of them. That’s why no one has ever left Hades. It’s something about the personalities that fall into this pit in the first place, because everyone is free to leave. But nobody ever has.”
“That’s what I’ve heard. Sounds like I’m in for trouble. Give me your strongest drink, and make it a double!”
As I put down round after round and took back my warmth, I pondered. I must say that though I can’t pronounce what I was drinking, it was strong and didn’t taste bad, like aged whiskey from a foreign land. What did it mean to find myself falling into a strange place? Maybe it was like being born? Isn’t being born like falling into a strange place, you’ve never been before? Living life is like falling into an abyss and you can’t see where you’re going. Could smashing on the rocks at the bottom be like getting to the end of life and dying? If not death, what is at the bottom? When we are born, we are shitting in our pants, and throughout life we shit in our pants a time or two. Sometimes strange spirits plead to us for things we cannot give. Other times we run around with our asses hanging out, but here and there we find solace. A gentle hand sweeps us up and carries us to a safe place. There we clean ourselves and find a fire’s warmth. Then we must go on. We jump back into the abyss. Once more the darkness swallows us up and we are falling. Adam and the barkeep claim there is a way out. It is a one-way path to the exit, but no one has ever chosen to exit. It is something more than suicide.
And so I had my last drink, gave back the apron and put my dried shorts back on, took a deep breath, walked out the swiveling doors, and jumped back in.
