AllFreeNovel
Share Us
“If you don’t like it here, I don’t want to know about the next circles.”
“Maybe you want to send me away?” She tried, feebly. Since Klaus had told me about the Blank, I hadn’t sent her away once. And I wasn’t going to, no matter what she said.
“You’re scared of Hell, but you’re not scared of the Blank?”
“I know the Blank. It’s sad and bleak, but nothing can hurt me there.”
“Nothing can hurt you here, either. You’re with me.”
She sighed and resigned herself to hiding under my hair.
Though poor and depressed, the souls in Limbo didn’t suffer that much. Their sentences were the shortest, too. Most hung around dingy bars, drinking and smoking with a bunch of demons who were supposed to torture them. Everyone was so demotivated that not a lot of torture happened. So, they just gossiped about this and that, about who Satan was dating, and who he’d left pregnant this month. The real torture began in the Second Circle, which was dedicated to those whose sin was Lust.
The Second Circle was windy. The sky was dark, the skeleton trees bent under the wrath of the hot, dusty storms, and most of the houses had lost their roofs a long time ago. They didn’t have windows, and they didn’t need them. The air was so hot and stuffy that it was barely breathable. Seeing how everyone but Pazuzu was struggling, professor Maat started taking out the masks she’d brought for us.
“Put these on, and don’t take them off until we reach the restaurant in the Fourth Circle. The weather in Hell is tricky.”
Tricky? More like hellish. I looked at Corri. “Are you okay? I don’t think she has a mask for pixies.”
She snapped her fingers, and the next thing I knew, she was covered from head to toe in something that looked like a miniature hazmat suit. She gave me the thumbs-up.
So, you have too much sex on Earth, you end up in the middle of an eternal storm. I didn’t think it was that bad of a punishment. The souls roaming the streets looked stressed and beaten-up, though. The horrible weather had gotten to them.
It rained in the Third Circle, and the streets were flooded with a green, disgusting slush. We had two mages in the VDC, and professor Maat asked them to clear a path for us. There was no reason to go through the same torture as the souls whose sin was Gluttony. Caspian and Merrit did as instructed, and the path before us dried up in a second, only to be inundated again behind us once we’d passed. Merrit was a loud, obnoxious mage who was constantly trying to make up for his ridiculous name through an overbearing attitude. I remembered sitting next to him on Mabon in year one. Caspian was slightly better-tempered.
I was glad we weren’t going to eat here. They did have a lot of restaurants, the food looked incredible, but Mrs. Maat told us it couldn’t
be eaten. The moment you stuck your fork in it, it turned into the green slush the whole Third Circle seemed to be made of. That was what you got when you succumbed to your voracious appetite on Earth. The souls here were starving. Not the souls in the Fourth Circle, though. Here, the demons tortured those who’d been greedy and hoarded wealth. Their punishment? They were surrounded by wealth and beauty, while their houses remained empty. The stores were filled with clothes, jewelry, and expensive perfumes, their restaurants served exotic, delicious food, but they could take nothing home. They couldn’t buy a single needle. They were doomed to never own a thing until they learned their lesson.
We weren’t guilty of Greed, so we did a bit of shopping, then stopped to eat at the Sinful Elk. Who the hell had come up with that name? Since it was safe inside, we removed our masks. Corri got out of her hazmat suit and ate a bit from my plate when I insisted it was the most delicious thing she’d ever tasted in her life. I had no idea what the name of the dish was, nor what it contained, but it was so good that I was tempted to ask for a second portion.
“Save some space for dessert,” Pazuzu laughed at me.
I grumpily listened to him, and when a demon girl placed a slice of tiramisu before me and I took a bite, I literally moaned. I couldn’t stop myself. All the VDC guys at the table looked at me, and I was aware I might have caused a bunch of surprise erections, but the cake was just too good.
“I had no idea you had such crazy amazing food in Hell.”
Paz smiled. “We do. It’s for demons only. The policy for the souls that get here is ‘look, smell, don’t touch’. Hilarious, huh?”
“Evil!”
“Welcome to Hell, baby!”
I didn’t find his jokes particularly funny. We finished our lunch and moved on with our hellish journey. When it came to the last few Circles, the situation in Hell was the opposite of Heaven. These were more populated than the first five, and the economy was thriving. For the demons, of course, not for the souls. The more wretched souls ended up in Hell, the more jobs they created. The better the demons tortured their bodiless clients, the more bonuses they got and the faster they rose in ranks. That was why Hell had so many earls, and dukes, and princes. They were, basically, managers with fancier titles.
The Sixth Circle held the heretics, and the Seventh was divided into three rings to better classify the souls who’d been violent, and punish them according to their deeds. If there was one thing I admired about Hell, it was how organized it was. The system worked like a well-oiled machine – no glitches, no excuses, no bribes, and no exceptions. The Eight Circle was made of ten concentric ditches where demons tortured the souls of those who’d committed fraud and thievery in any way – seducers, con-artists, liars, corrupt politicians, and even hypocrites. After everything that I’d seen, I still wasn’t prepared for the last Circle of Hell – the Ninth.
We took off our masks. The air was hot, but the cold coming from the frozen lake in the center balanced the temperature out. Thanks to these two extremes meeting in the middle, it was the only Circle that had decent weather all year round. The best place to live in Hell, for sure, if you could ignore the cries of pain coming from the lake.
“This is Cocytus,” professor Maat said as we stopped at the shore. Shadows danced over it, limbs moving back and forth, hands reaching toward the sky, mouths agape in silent screams, loud screams, and all kinds of screams in between. “Sinners who’ve committed treachery are trapped in ice, each according to his or her guilt. The lake is divided into four concentric rings, and as you can imagine, the one in the middle is the worst and most painful.”
I stepped away from the shore. The other VDC students were fascinated, but I just couldn’t look at the desolation on the sinners’ faces for another minute. I turned around and looked in the distance.
“My father’s palace,” Pazuzu said. “I’d love for you to see it one day.”
GC joined us. From the corner of my eye, I saw Francis and Sariel were sticking close, too.
“So, how do you feel?” GC asked me.
