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“We would have made funny old people.”
“We would have.”
“Candy is a lucky girl.”
“Not so lucky at the end.”
“No one is lucky at the end.”
Alice holds my hand until we reach shore. A lot of confusing feelings are coming back to me, but like my memories of Candy, this isn’t the time or place for them. I push them all away. For now.
When we reach shore I pick a tunnel at random and go inside to look for Death.
The passage is made of the same shiny black stone as the rest of the mountain. It reflects light from the opening a long way in. I don’t have to use a match until I come to a sharp right turn. By the time I use two more, the tunnel ends at a smooth wall. I light another match and look around. I suppose if I was looking to die, this might be a nice, dramatic location. I’m sure it would look great in a forensic photo and on the dust jacket of a bestselling true-crime exposé. But all that will have to wait. I’m not looking to die. I’m looking for the prick that makes people die. But this seriously doesn’t feel like the place. I’m about to back out the way I came when I look up and see a patch of dirt. Dry roots hang down a few inches. I stand on a rock outcropping and touch it. The dirt crumbles in my hand and a few inches of sky lights up the cave. Probing a little deeper, my hand lands on what feels like the lip of the hole. I jump from the outcrop and shove my other hand up until it finds the edge. Then I pull myself up.
I swear climbing out of the ground feels exactly like the first time I escaped from Hell. I half expect to come up in Hollywood Forever cemetery. But no such luck.
I’m back on that little slice of parched Heaven we call the Tenebrae. Right back where I started from again. The story of my life. I look around at where I came out.
I’m at the base of one of the spiked mountains that the Magistrate insists are rocks. There’s nothing between me and the next set of mountains but the remains of an old fifties-style gas station with a general store attached. The roof of the store has collapsed, but it’s better than nothing.
I use the golden blade to dig a big X in the ground so I can find my way back, then head for the store. Being back in the desert feels funny after being on the river just a few minutes ago. I can feel the water being squeezed out of my system with every step. My boots crunch on pulverized rock, so that each step sounds like I’m walking on snow. I wonder if it ever snowed in the Tenebrae. This place might not be so depressing with a few flurries coming down. I remember a funny little movie, CQ. There’s a scene toward the end where it’s snowing on the moon. It was weirdly pretty. If Mr. Muninn can make this place such a brain-numbing shit pit, he should be able to turn it into something a little less stifling. I’ll have to mention it the next time I see him.
I reach the general store in about twenty minutes, give or take a decade. I’ve given up trying to tell time out here. The X is good and clear from the front of the store, so I go in.
The place is as much of a wreck as it looked from the mountain. However, after just a few minutes of looking, I find an unbroken bottle of Moxie cola and a box of very stale chocolate donuts. I take them outside under the gas station’s carport and use the golden blade to draw a magic circle in the dirt. Nothing elaborate. Just some simple summoning hoodoo. Then I sit in the middle with my bounty and wait.
I start on the donuts first and use the Moxie to wash down the rock-hard nuggets. Even stale they’re good, though nothing like the ones at Donut Universe back home.
Donut Universe. I hadn’t thought of it until this moment. One more thing maybe lost forever. If I remember right, there was a donut shop a mile or two from Lucifer’s old palace in Pandemonium. It’s where I found Cindil, my Donut Universe angel who was murdered by some piece-of-shit demons just to piss me off. I got her out of Hell, but never went back to check on the Hellion donut emporium. All right. That’s the first place on my bucket list when I get back. It’s good to have priorities.
Thinking about Cindil, Donut Universe, and L.A., I almost fall into the trap of thinking about home. I try to force the thoughts from my head, and when they won’t go, I take out Doris’s butcher knife and cut my arm lengthwise from the elbow to the wrist. Let the blood flow and the pain sink in. Then I have another donut.
I finish the Moxie and toss the rest of the donuts back into the store. That was a good and useful way to spend my time. How long have I been waiting for Death? How long does it take to eat six stale donuts? Probably not that long. Maybe I should have paced myself. Not only am I sitting alone in the most monotonous place in the entire universe, but I’m full of sugar. Didn’t think that one through.
I get out a Malediction to calm my nerves only to find that I used my last match back in the tunnel. I could use some hoodoo to burn something, but there’s nothing in the circle I can burn except me. I shouldn’t have thrown the donut box away. I could have used that. I can still go get it. I mean, I can see it from where I’m sitting, but I’m new to this saint-meditating-in-the-desert bit and I’m afraid that if I leave the circle it will reset whatever magic clock determines how long I have to wait and I’ll have to start all over again.
In an act of desperation, I put a Malediction on the ground and whisper some hoodoo to see if I can light it.
It explodes like a firecracker.
Yeah. I need to work on those little spells. God knows I have time for it now.
I try shouting at the mountain to see if I get an echo back, but what little voice I had lef
t I used up talking to Alice.
I might have lost everything else, but at least I got to see her again. That’s pretty good. One check mark in the Not Entirely Dismal column. I’m going to have to come up with a lot more of those to even out that column with the Are You Fucking Kidding Me one.
Now how long has it been? Another five minutes? Ten? I shouldn’t have had all that sugar.
After all the time I spent in Hell, I should probably have looked up my parents. I know my father is here. He tried to kill me and Upstairs they’re not big on trying to kill your son. That said, I’m not even sure my mom is down here. Her only sin was being sad and lonely. Okay, she fucked an archangel and gave birth to me. And I’m guessing giving birth to an Abomination might not get you in good with the Heavenly membership committee. Right. Second thing to do when I get back. Look up Mom. She hated being alone, so she’s probably with the refugees at Heaven’s gates. I think about my father some more. Consider letting bygones be bygones and all that crap they tell you in magazines. Hell, I’m knee-deep in angels ready to murder the universe over daddy issues. Maybe it’s time to let mine go.
Still, it might be fun to sneak up behind him and yell “Bang!” just once.
Is Death here yet?
I take a long drink of Aqua Regia. It burns my throat, but not as much as before. Still, it makes me dizzy. Or am I dizzy because I cut myself? I think I lost a lot more blood than I meant to. Oh, man. If I die here and someone finds me, my headstone is going to read here lies sandman slim, he died of donuts and self-pity.
