The Gargoyle

XXIX.

YOU KNOW WHERE YOU ARE, DON’T YOU?

The blackness and my awareness arrived together. I was instantly awake, my eyes peeled wide, but I could see nothing. I could feel by the quality of the air (moist, massive) that I was in a constricted place. The atmosphere was almost too heavy for breathing, with the scent of rotting wood, and I was on my back. A feeling of smothered panic lay on top of me.

I AM HERE.

I could hear-no, feel-the glee in the snake’s voice; she was happier in my spine than she had ever been. The morphine had been keeping her in check but now, in this place, that protection had been lifted. The snake thrashed in celebration.

THERE IS NOTHING YOU CAN DO ABOUT IT.

I tried to extend my arms but my hands met a barrier on all sides, only inches away. Flat, smooth wood. A few feet across; a few feet deep; the length of my body. For a human, there is only one box of this size.

YOU ARE IN A COFFIN.

This was not real. I tried to remember everything I’d learned about morphine withdrawal, because that was the reality of my situation, not this imagined tomb. I had studied, like the student who prays the test will be canceled, about the weaning from the addiction. Cold-turkeying off morphine is not life-threatening, as it is with some other drugs, but it can result in strange visions. Clearly, this was one of them.

There were so many reasons that this could not be real. How could I have been taken from the bedroom and buried without waking? If the wood of the coffin was already rotting, how could I have been underground that long? How could there still be oxygen? All this was impossible; therefore, I was hallucinating.

But are people who hallucinate rational enough to realize it? Aren’t hallucinations supposed to be, by definition, irrational? I didn’t feel as if I’d lost touch with reality; in fact, this felt too much like reality. Do hallucinating people note air quality? Do they think about how long it takes before the wood of a coffin gives out, or how long before the worms find their way in? If I was really in withdrawal, why was I not craving my drug? So although I knew this experience couldn’t be real, I had to wonder why I was asking such logical questions.

It was not long before I discovered that withdrawing addicts lose their composure in exactly the same manner that careless millionaires lose their money: gradually, then suddenly. After careful consideration, I instantly lost all control in what can best be called the opposite of an epiphany: instead of my thoughts coming together in a moment of clarity, they bolted from the center of my mind like victims trying to escape the epicenter of a disaster.

Although there was clearly no room for leverage, I threw my fists around frantically, pounding at the wood weighted down with six feet of dirt. I clawed until my fingernails peeled back and screamed until my throat was emptied of all hope. I had believed, in the hospital, waiting for the next dйbridement session, that I knew fear. But that was bullshit; I’d known nothing. To wake alive in a coffin and know you’re waiting for the end? That’s fear.

My hysterical little rebellion proved useless, of course. So I stopped. Even if I somehow managed to break through the wood, it would not change the fact of my death, only the means: rather than be killed by lack of oxygen, I’d be suffocated by the dirt that stormed the coffin. As hungry as I was for air, the earth is always more ravenous. And so, a hush fell on my box like a cadaver’s blanket. With nothing to do but wait, I made the decision to be dignified.

My breath echoed, as if the coffin were a shabby little concert hall. I decided I would listen until I could listen no more, and then the very last, soft note of my final breath would trail out into the dark. I’d go gently, I promised myself, because I’d already-given the severity of my accident-managed to live much longer than I should have.

Then I realized how incredibly foolish this was, all this thinking about dying in a hallucination. No problem. Steady. What had I taught Marianne Engel in Germany? It’s all about the breathing. You steady the weapon by slowing your breathing. In, out, in, out. Steady. Calm. I am the weapon, I told myself; a weapon of living, forged in fire, and unstoppable.

And then. I felt. Something. And this something can only be described by a word I don’t want to use: a new-age, stupid word that I must bring into play because, unfortunately, it is the only correct word. I felt a presence. And it was right beside me. A woman. I don’t know how I knew it was a woman, but it was. It was not Marianne Engel, because the breathing was wrong. I hadn’t realized until that moment that I could identify her by the cadence of her breathing, but I could, and this wasn’t her. It occurred to me that perhaps the breath was coming from the snake. Perhaps the bitch had finally exited my spine for a direct confrontation. After all, you can only talk behind someone’s back for so long.

But no, it was a human body calmly lying beside me. Which was ridiculous, because there was no room in the coffin-the imaginary coffin-for anyone else. Still, just in case, I snuggled against the wall on my side. Her breathing was relaxed, which somehow made it even more frightening.

A hand touched mine. I jerked away. I was surprised that I could feel her flesh; I had assumed this entity was immaterial. Her fingers were tiny but she was still able to force her hand into mine.

I tried to sound courageous while demanding to know who she was, but my voice broke. No answer. There was only the continuation of her breathing. Again: “Who are you?”

Her fingers gripped a bit tighter, intertwining with mine. I asked another question. “What are you doing here?”

There was still only the sound of her soft, relaxed breath. With every question she did not answer, I became a little less afraid. The way she clutched my hand was no longer menacing, but comforting, and soon I could feel myself lifting, almost-no, not almost: definitely-floating. My back began to lift away from the wood on which I lay.

I felt like a levitating assistant whose hand was being held by the magician. I felt us moving through the lid of the coffin, and then we were traveling up through the soil. An orange glow spread across the insides of my eyelids as we got closer to the surface, and I was not even sure whether I was still breathing.

I felt the tug of earth as I broke into the sunlight, and the color exploded. I was lifted upwards, a few inches above the surface of the ground. Soil trailed off my chest and I could feel it trickle down my ribs, falling from my sides. I was floating in the air unsupported; the woman did not break the grave’s surface with me. Only her hand came through, connecting me to the earth like a balloon on a string. Her hand held mine for perhaps a few seconds before it let go and was pulled back into the grave. It was then that I realized that she could not leave: she had not been a visitor to my coffin, I had been a visitor to hers.

My body settled onto the mound of dirt. My eyes adjusted to the light. I was on a mountain and I could hear a river nearby. It was peaceful, just for a moment, until the ground beneath me started to move once more. For a panicked instant, I was worried that the silent woman had decided to pull me back down, but this was not what was happening. On all sides of me a hundred little eruptions began, like burrowing animals clawing their way out of the soil.

There were, at first, only glints in the light. But then shapes began to emerge: flowers, with colorless petals. When I looked closer, I could see that they were made of glass. Lilies. Blooming everywhere were a thousand glass lilies, glowing with pulses of light that seemed to come from within.

I reached out to pluck one. As soon as I touched it, it froze under my finger. Turning from glass into ice, all the thousands of flowers-as if they were connected by one soul-began to shatter in tiny explosions. With each came the release of a single word, in a woman’s whisper, and together they fashioned a symphony that sounded like pure love. Aishiteru, aishiteru, aishiteru.

The bursting lilies raced down the mountain like dominoes detonating their way to the horizon. Underneath the joyous blanket of Aishiteru in the sky, the mountain itself shook and trembled and fell, flattening itself into tundra that unfolded everywhere. Just moments after it began, all around me the frozen shards of flower had become a field of ice that extended as far as my eyes could see.

I stared into this vast icy wilderness and it stared mercilessly right back at me. The arctic wind whipped hard against my shaking body. I was now completely aware that I was naked, save for the angel coin necklace that never left my neck.

The grave was gone-naturally, now that the entire mountain had disappeared-but there was a simple robe lying where it had been. When I picked up the garment to measure it against my body, flecks of dirt fell from it and were carried away by the powdery ballet of the blowing wind. The robe was much too small but because it was all I had, I put it on. I looked as ridiculous as you might imagine a burnt man in a tiny woman’s garment would look, but when you’re freezing there’s little profit in worrying about fashion sense.

The robe was the same one that I had seen on the Japanese woman at the Halloween party. Without a doubt it, and the grave it had come out of, had belonged to Sei.

The gleaming bleakness of this new world engulfed me. How complete was my change of venue: from the smallest and blackest space I could imagine, to the widest and whitest. For miles around I was the tallest object, enormous simply by virtue of possessing legs upon which to stand, and yet I felt dwarfed by the immensity of the sky. To stand on tundra is to feel concurrently grand and inconsequential.

The thin robe was little protection against the cold, and the wind cut to my marrow. Something moved at the edge of my vision. I was already developing snow blindness, but I squinted to confirm the sight: a trudging bulk outlined against the vicious blankness. The figure seemed to be coming towards me, but it was hard to tell on such a flat surface. I headed towards it. Whatever it was, it couldn’t be any worse than standing still, awaiting hypothermia.

After some time I realized that the object moving towards me was a man. He must help me, I thought, for to not help me would be to kill me. The first detail I could make out was his thick red locks, which stood out against the snow like bloodstains on a bedsheet. Next I could see that he was wrapped in heavy furs and wore thick boots. His pants were thickly strapped leather and his coat was an animal thing. Over his shoulder, he seemed to be carrying a parcel of pelts. Puffs of steam exited his mouth. Ice frosted his beard. He was close now. Deep creases lined the corners of his eyes and he looked older than I believe he actually was.

When he arrived in front of me, he held out the package he’d been carrying on his shoulder and said, “Farðu í Þetta.” I understood what this meant: You will put these on.

I unwrapped the package to find a full set of clothing, thick skins with fur that would protect me. I pulled them on as quickly as I could, and soon I felt the air between my body and the material starting to warm. “Hvað heitir Þú?” What is your name? I was shocked to hear Icelandic out of my mouth as well.

“I am Sigurðr Sigurрsson, and you will come with me.” His answer confirmed the identity that I had guessed; but only hesitantly, because here-wherever here was-Sigurðr was unburned despite the way his life had ended. Which made me wonder why my body was still damaged.

“Where are we going?” I asked.

“I don’t know.”

“When will we get there?”

“I don’t know.” He squinted against the horizon. “I’ve been traveling a long time. I must be getting close.”

Around his waist Sigurðr wore a scabbard, the same one that had been clanging against Sei’s hips when they were dancing. He extracted Sigurðrsnautr by its serpent handle, and handed over his belt and sheath. “Put this on. You’ll need it.”

I asked why. He answered that he didn’t know.

I threw away Sei’s robe, thinking it useless now that I had the skins. Sigurðr picked it up and handed it back to me. “In Hel, you must use everything that you have.”

I twisted the robe around my waist, as a second belt above the one that Sigurðr had just given me. I asked him how he could tell in which direction we should head.

“I don’t know,” he answered. Sigurðr was quite a conversationalist. He used his sword as a walking stick, the blade cutting into the snow with each step. For a man who didn’t know where he was going, he took very resolute strides.

“Is this a hallucination?” It struck me as supremely odd to be in a hallucination, asking whether it was a hallucination, in a language that I didn’t understand. (In fact, how many people in the entire world know the Icelandic word for “hallucination” is ofskynjun?) Sigurðr answered that he didn’t think it was an ofskynjun, but couldn’t be positive.

We walked. And walked. And walked. For days, but the sun never set. Perhaps you think this an exaggeration, that I really mean we walked for hours, which seemed like days. But no, I mean days. We traveled in constant fatigue but we never came to the point of needing sleep, and despite my bad knee, I felt I could continue indefinitely. I thought of the places in the farthest northern reaches of the world where the sun remains in the sky for six months at a time. Would we have to march that long?

Sigurðr remained a man of few, and confused, words; for the most part, the only sound that came from his body was a slightly musical clacking from under his pelts, around his neck. After a while I stopped talking to him, except to try to make him laugh. I never succeeded. Sometimes I stopped walking simply to break the monotony. I would beg Sigurðr to wait for just a minute but he would always state that there was no time for rest. When I asked why, he would answer, “Because we need to get there.”

When I asked Sigurðr where “there” was, he didn’t know. So I told him that, given the fact he didn’t know, I could see no reason to continue to follow him. He would snort, say that I was allowed to make this stupid decision, and continue walking without me. Just when he was about to disappear from view, I’d take off after him in a hobbling run. Because of course I needed him-what would I do in this place alone? And so we plodded ever onwards, heading to the place that he couldn’t define and I couldn’t imagine.

Hallucinations should be better than this, I thought. Walking the tundra for days is boring and I was surprised I could hallucinate anything that mundane, for that long. The cold was too piercing; the patterns of snow were too perfectly random in their swirls; and my tiredness ached too honestly to be imagined. The only thing that didn’t seem realistic was my ability to continue with neither rest nor food.

Of course it was a delusion. A damn fine, cold, protracted hallucination. Withdrawal should not be like this. Unless…

“Sigurðr, did I die?”

He finally laughed. “You’re just a visitor here.”

If this place was Sigurðr’s, as the coffin had been Sei’s, I wanted to know more about it. About everything. I decided to abandon all subtlety. “That sound coming from around your neck-is it made by the treasure necklace that once belonged to Svanhildr?”

He stopped walking, perhaps deciding whether to confirm. He did: “Yes.”

“Do you have the arrowhead necklace, too?”

“That went to Friрleifr.”

“His name was changed to Sigurðr, you know.”

He didn’t say anything for a few moments, until he answered in the softest voice I had heard him use. “Yes, I am aware. It was a great honor.”

“Will you tell me about Einarr?”

The question made him restart his stride. “That story is not for you.”

“I’ve already heard it.”

Sigurðr turned and leveled his eyes at me. “No. You’ve heard Marianne’s version of my story, which is a different thing. How do you dare to think you know my heart, when you don’t even understand your own?”

Leave it to a Viking to disarm you with eloquence when you least expect it. I shut up and started walking again.

I kept thinking that something was just ahead, but nothing ever was. I kept thinking that we’d encounter a ridge overlooking a valley, or moss sprouting out of granite crests, but each “ridge” was nothing more than the current horizon being replaced by a new horizon. I prayed for anything to break the monotony. A boulder. A moose’s hoof print. A frozen sled dog. A man’s name pissed into the snow with swooping yellow letters. But we encountered only more ice, more snow. On the third day (I think it was the third), I just stopped. Gave up.

“There’s nothing out there. Whatever you think you’ll find…” My voice trailed away. “Sigurðr, you’ve been going ‘there’ for more than a thousand years, and you don’t even know where there is.”

“You travel until you arrive,” he said, “and you have now come far enough.”

This place was absolutely no different from any other place on the tundra. I spun around in all directions, throwing my arms about to emphasize this point. “What are you talking about?”

“Look into the sky.”

My eyes went up. Despite the fact that no one was within miles, a single flaming arrow was arching directly towards me.

I wanted to move but was frozen to the spot, my only reaction to cover my head with my hands. (Although, after hearing all of Marianne Engel’s stories, a more logical decision would probably have been to cover my heart.) The arrow missed me by a few inches, striking the ground, and the earth broke open like an albino monster unhinging its jaw. Huge segments of ice lifted and twisted, throwing us wildly around. A large chunk hit my right shoulder, sending me bouncing into another ragged block. There was a moment of clarity, similar to that moment when I’d driven over the cliff, in which everything slowed as I watched it unfold. Water languidly erupted from a crack in the ground, and I finally understood why there had been nothing to distinguish the landscape in all the time that we’d been walking. We had not been on land at all, but on a massive sheet of ice. Frozen slabs pirouetted around me and soon I found that gravity was pulling me into the newly uncovered sea.

An immediate chill cut through me completely. My pelts were useless; worse than useless, actually, because they absorbed water and started to pull me down. At first I was able to claw my way along the bobbing ice at the surface, digging my fingers into any cracks I could find. I felt the warmth of my body suck itself into the core of my stomach, but soon the heat was not safe even there. I could feel my movements slow, and my teeth were clattering so violently that they drowned out the cracking of the ice around me; I wondered whether even my keloid scars were turning blue.

Sigurðr was nowhere to be seen. He must have been swallowed amid the bobbing ice. A block brushed up against the left side of my body and another smacked at my back. They were circling around me, closing in and pushing me down. Any scientist will explain that broken ice redistributes evenly on the surface of the water, and this is what it was doing in an attempt to cover the hole that the arrow had opened. So even in a hallucinatory ocean the basic laws of physics still seemed to apply; this, no doubt, would have brought a smile to Galileo’s face.

I could no longer hold my head above water, the ice tap-tap-tapping against my cauliflower ears, and I closed my eyes because this is what one does when going under. I felt my body shut down. So this is how it ends. In water. I slipped under, and actually felt some relief. It’ll be easier this way.

I had no trouble holding my breath for many minutes, dropping the entire time, until I tired of waiting for my lungs to give out. I opened my eyes, expecting that I would not be able to see more than a few feet. Just as it had been difficult to gauge distance above the ice, so it was underneath: once again there was nothing to supply perspective. No fish, no other creatures, no weeds, only clear water. Bubbles escaped from the folds of my clothing and rolled up along my body until they caught at the corners of my eyelids. Funny. In the real world I couldn’t produce tears of water, but in an underwater world I could produce tears made of air.

A glow emerged, above me, in the distance. It refracted through my bubble tears and I wondered, Is this the corridor of light that leads a dead man to Heaven? Not bloody likely. The way things were going, it was probably one of those saber-toothed fishes that uses dangling phosphorescent flaps of skin to lure in other animals to eat. As it turned out, however, the glow was neither the path to Heaven nor a Machiavellian fish. It was the fire of the burning arrow that had crashed into the ice, now clenched in one of Sigurðr’s hands as he came plunging through the ocean towards me.

The light (a fire that doesn’t extinguish in water: so much for natural physics still applying in a supernatural place) played across Sigurðr’s beard and into the creases around his eyes. His long red hair stretched out around his head like a glowing kelp halo, and he was smiling serenely, as if something wonderful were happening. He held out the arrow like an Olympian passing the torch and, all the while, we continued our slow descent through the water. My fingers closed around the shaft, I felt glorious warmth spread through my body, and Sigurðr smiled like a man who had done his job. Like a man who would continue to be remembered. He nodded his approval and plunged far below, leaving me to continue falling liquidly alone.

I fell through the bottom of the ocean.

I dropped only a few feet before I hit the ground. When I looked up, the floor of the ocean-the water that should have been a ceiling above me-was gone. My feet were on solid matter and the light had changed from the ocean’s crystal blue to a dead gray.

I was now in a dark wood of twisted trees.

I heard the scurrying patter of feet across the forest floor, coming from at least three sides. Twigs snapping, brush rustling. I held up the arrow to use as a torch. The flash of a four-footed animal sliding among the tree trunks, then a glimpse of another creature. How many were there? Two-no, there went another! Three, at least! What were they? My mind ran wild with bestial imaginings: a lion, a leopard, perhaps a wolf. If they came for me, how could I protect myself? I had the Viking’s scabbard, but not the sword; I had the Buddhist’s robe, but not the faith.

Directly ahead was a path that led through the forest, over a small hill, and I could hear the approach of another, bolder animal. There, a hint of it through the trees. It appeared bipedal, so perhaps some sort of fabulous forest ape? Apparently not. When it came around the corner, I could see that it was a man, dressed in simple clothing, with a large stomach and stubble on his cheeks. When he saw me, a broad smile spread across his face and he lifted his arms out as if preparing to embrace an old friend after years apart. “Ciao!”

“Tu devi essere Francesco.” You must be Francesco. With Sigurðr, I had known Icelandic; with this one, I understood Italian.

“Sм,” he confirmed, taking my hand. “Il piacere è mio.”

“No, the pleasure is mine. A mutual friend has shown me some of your work. It’s good.”

“Ah, Marianna!” Francesco beamed. “But I’m just a simple craftsman. I see you’ve brought the arrow. Good. You might need that.”

“What do we do now? Please don’t say that you don’t know.”

Francesco laughed until his bear’s belly shook. “Sigurðr’s always been a little confused, but I know exactly where we’re going.” He paused for effect. “Straight into Hell.”

You have to appreciate a man who can say such a thing with a straight face, and I couldn’t help but laugh. “Well, I think I’m getting used to that, anyways.”

“This Hell will be more complex, so you’d be wise not to laugh too hard.” But, to reassure me after his warning, he added, “I’ve been sent to lead you, at Marianna’s request. She came with prayers for you.”

“I guess that’s a start.” And so we set off on our infernal quest. I was armed with a flaming arrow, a Buddhist robe tied around my waist, a Viking snowsuit, and an empty scabbard, and I had a fourteenth-century metalworker as my guide. I couldn’t have been more prepared.

We passed through a set of gates, and soon we were standing in front of a river that I recognized from Marianne Engel’s bedside readings. “Acheron.”

The river was a terrible thing, with ice bobbing amid garbage and misshapen beasts. There were rotting chunks of flesh, as if a thousand years of coffins had been emptied into congealing blood. The fetid perfume of decay permeated everything. There were almost-men, only somewhat human in shape, floundering in the horrible liquid. Shouts for mercy were thrown out of pleading mouths; I knew that these creatures would continue drowning, unaided, forever.

A mist rose from the river. Through it floated, so calmly as if to seem above the currents, a boat carrying the ferryman Charon. It/he was a dark man-creature, at least eight feet tall, in a ripped, molding robe. His beard was like knotted seaweed and his nose was only half there, with bite marks where the rest must have been ripped off in a battle. From his shriveled mouth jutted rotten teeth, jagged and broken. His skin was gray, wet, and leathery, like that of a diseased sea turtle, and his hands were arthritic claws that held a gnarled wooden pole. His eye sockets were empty but for the blaze within: each eye was a wheel of fire. As he steered towards the shore, he blasted out words more like thunder than speech. “THIS ONE IS NOT DEAD.”

While no small man, Francesco looked feeble compared to Charon. Nonetheless, he refused to be bowed and drew up to his full height to reply, “This is a most special case.”

Charon, now landed at the bank, swept his talons in a dismissive motion. “THIS ONE CANNOT CROSS.”

“He has come far already, so please hear us. Allow us this courtesy, we who are so much less than you. How long has it been since you were visited by one of the living?”

“LABOR NOT TO TRICK ME. HE IS NOT TO CROSS HERE. ANOTHER CRAFT THAN MINE MUST GIVE PASSAGE.”

“Charon, be not so quick with your dismissal,” my guide said. “Forces greater than we have set this voyage into motion.”

Charon’s eyes upon me felt like a condemnation, as if he were looking into the most ignoble corners of my soul. I held the flaming arrow so close to my body that I feared my clothes might go up in flames, but I needed the warmth against his stare.

Charon turned his attention back to Francesco. “YOU MAY SPEAK MORE.”

“We request that you allow us to cross. We’ve brought payment.” Francesco bowed slightly and held out a gold coin.

“THIS IS PAYMENT FOR ONE.”

“Of course, you are correct.” When Francesco beckoned to me to step forward, I shook my head. Who brings money to a hallucination? And then Francesco tapped his chest, to remind me of what was hanging on mine.

I removed the angel coin from my necklace and passed it over into Charon’s claw. He paid particular attention to the side that depicted the Archangel Michael killing the dragon. A strange expression crossed the boatman’s face; I got the feeling it was as close to a smile as his ugly mouth could manage. He stepped to one side and swept an arm to indicate that we were invited to board. Francesco nodded. “We deeply appreciate your generosity.”

The ferryman dipped his pole into the foul water and sent us into the middle of Acheron. The boat, adorned with skulls and ropes of human hair, was constructed of rotten wood, and yet no water entered the gaping breaches in the bow. Small whirlpools folded in upon themselves everywhere, dragging down the perpetually drowning bodies. Occasionally, Charon would use his oar to flail at one of the sinners.

Two figures in the distance, clawing their way ever closer to the ferry, looked strangely familiar. A man and a woman. But my attention was diverted by a screaming man, only feet from the boat. He gulped in a mouthful of the rancid river as others sinners pulled him under. He grabbed at anything in his reach and took a severed leg down with him.

Seeing the look of revulsion on my face, Francesco said, “None are here by accident. Hell is a choice because salvation is available to anyone who seeks it. The damned choose their fates, by deliberately hardening their hearts.”

I couldn’t agree. “No one would choose to be damned.”

Francesco shook his head. “But it is so easy not to be.”

The couple was now close enough that I was certain (as I could be, that is, given their bodies’ decay) that they were Debi and Dwayne Michael Grace. They were pleading for my help, reaching their hands-full of broken fingers-towards me. But the horde of sinners grabbed relentlessly at them. Debi might have been able to reach the ferry, if Dwayne had not clutched at her frantically in an effort not to be yanked under. She responded in kind; each tried to use the other for leverage to push up and away from the multitude. Their battling against each other only ensured they went down together.

It did not take long before Charon dropped us at the other side and steered his boat back into the fray. “I think I did quite well,” I said, trying and failing to smile. “Didn’t Dante faint when he met Charon?”

A mountain stood in front of us, rising from Acheron’s shore, and Francesco took the lead.

The pitch was gradual at the beginning but soon cut sharply up. It became necessary to wedge our hands into cracks wherever we could find them. This was not easy with my missing fingers, and I had to pass the burning arrow from hand to hand each time I shifted my body. The higher we went, the harder the damp winds blew.

Francesco advised me to tuck the arrow into Sigurðr’s scabbard. I didn’t see this as a very good plan; I was quite sure my animal pelts were not fire retardant. Nevertheless, I did as I was told. There was a slight tickling along my hip where the flames danced, but my clothes did not burn.

Human forms were carried in the gale around us, jerked about like struggling fish caught on lines. I knew who they were: the souls of the Carnal, swept up by their passion on Earth and so doomed in Hell. I considered my own career as a pornographer, which didn’t bode well. I asked Francesco if this was where I would end up, someday.

“You never knew passion,” Francesco yelled back, “until you met her.”

He didn’t need to say her name; we both knew about whom he was talking.

I tried to ignore the howling, both wind and human, and eventually we passed through the worst. When I was finally able to let go of the cliff’s wall, my fingers remained curled like the pincers of a frightened lobster.

The path opened off the mountain and we entered into a place that was hotter. I cupped my hands around the arrow’s flame and my fingers finally started to uncurl; as soon as I was able, I began to peel away the outer pelts of my Viking clothing. Remembering Sigurðr’s advice, I did not discard them.

As I bundled up the furs to carry them, I noticed that my amputated fingers were slightly longer at their nubs and there was some hair growing out of my forearms where the follicles had been destroyed. I touched my skull and found that new stubble was emerging there as well. My scars were perhaps a little less thick, a little less red. I’d run my fingers over my body a million times, like a blind man memorizing a story in Braille, but now I was reading a different plot.

Try to imagine, if you can, the emotions of a burnt man discovering that his body is regenerating, or of the man growing hair after having resigned himself to a lifetime of beef-jerky baldness. I excitedly informed Francesco of my discoveries.

“Remember where you are,” he warned, “and remember who you are.”

We came to the edge of a forest where screaming trees grew out of burning sands. A shimmering heat rose, distorting everything, and the tree limbs looked as if they were moving. Birds flew around, snapping at the branches. “The Wood of Suicides,” Francesco said.

I soon realized that the trees were not exactly trees. The branches were human limbs, gesticulating wildly, with blood running out like sap. Tormented human voices poured out from the holes that had been ripped by the birds-which were not birds, I could see now, but Harpies that resembled vultures with pale female faces and claws as sharp as razors. Their stench overwhelmed us every time one flew anywhere near.

“The voices from the trees,” Francesco said, “can only come forth after the Harpies have ripped their flesh and their blood is flowing. Suicides can only express themselves through that which destroys them.”

“Quod me nutrit, me destruit,” I muttered under my breath, too low for Francesco to hear.

I remembered then that he had deliberately inhaled his wife’s plague before commanding his brother to shoot him through with an arrow. “Is this what Hell is like for you?”

“My choice to die came within hours of my inevitable death, and it was a decision made with love, not cowardice. An important distinction to remember.” He paused for a moment, then added, “Although my afterlife is not this one, there is a reason that I am your guide here.”

I thought he was going to say more, but he only told me that we still had a great distance to travel.

I was now stripped to the waist. My skin was definitely improving. We continued through the woods and I heard what seemed, at first, to be the murmur of a throbbing beehive. As we came closer, I realized that it was a waterfall at the wood’s edge. The rushing wind swept back our hair, mine still growing.

This waterfall did not fall over the edge of any cliff; it just dropped straight down from the sky and cut through the desert floor in front of us. Francesco indicated that I needed to throw Sigurðr’s scabbard into the waterfall, as it would make an appropriate gift. Why? And for whom?

After removing the flaming arrow, I did as instructed. I watched the leather loop of the belt tumble down, bouncing in the froth, before being finally swallowed into the angry mouth at the bottom of the waterfall.

Almost immediately, a dark figure emerged and started climbing towards us.

This creature was three united bodies working together from a single torso. It had six gangly arms, whose six hairy hands reached into the waterfall to secure handholds, and it moved like a spider climbing a web. At first I thought there must have been some rock behind the waterfall but as it came closer, I could see its hands were wrapping around the liquid itself, twisting the streams of water into something like ropes. The beast had a sharp tail that cut into the waterfall, and though it was still some distance away, its smell already reminded me of piles of decaying mayflies on a beach.

“Geryon,” Francesco said, “who was once a king in Spain but is now the monster of fraud. It’s the guardian of this waterfall, and is the one who must deliver us into the pit.”

When Geryon reached ground level, its six legs pushed against the stream and it catapulted towards us, making a perfect six-point landing.

It was a large thing (as most things in Hell seemed to be), its torso littered with shiny scales. Its three heads were about six feet above my single one. Each face had similar features: all were lumpy with great welts, large lips that held rotting teeth, and eyes like black pearls housed in half-opened shells. Still, despite their ugliness, the faces seemed to be without deceit. All three heads began to speak at once.

“WHAT DO YOU…”

“WHY ARE YOU…”

“HOW DARE YOU…”

“…WANT?”

“…HERE?”

“…DISTURB ME?”

“We wish to enter the next circle,” Francesco answered.

“NO, IT CANNOT…”

“WE WILL NOT…”

“THIS ONE…”

“…BE DONE!”

“…HELP YOU!”

“…IS NOT DEAD!”

“It is true that we ask a great deal, and it is true that this one is not dead,” Francesco admitted. “But he is a friend of Marianna Engel.”

The name seemed to mean something to Geryon and the three heads muttered amongst themselves. Eventually, they took a vote-“YES. NO. YES”-before deciding to take us. (Who would have guessed that the monster of fraud was a democracy?) It turned so that we might climb onto its broad back. Francesco ushered me up first, whispering, “I’ll ride between you and the tail. It’s poisonous.”

When we were settled, the beast took a robust leap from land’s edge towards the waterfall. When we hit the water, I saw Geryon’s hands plunge into the liquid and grasp the fluid that flowed through its fists like translucent snakes. While it was difficult to keep my grip, I noticed that my arms were stronger than they had been since my accident. At one point Geryon’s three heads said, “NOT…SO…TIGHT.”

As we neared the bottom, Francesco called out over the water’s roar, warning me to prepare for the next level. It would be, he said with a tone that forced me to take note, particularly unpleasant.

We dismounted and Geryon disappeared back into the waterfall. I took stock of exactly how far my healing had progressed. Most of my skin was smooth, and the pancreatitis scar that had adorned my stomach was gone. Nearly all of my hair had regrown. My lips were once again full. I bounced on my shattered knee and found it strong. My lost fingers were more than half recovered and I used them to rub, at the juncture of my legs, the small nub of my emerging cock.

“We are now in Maleboge, home of the Seducers. In this Circle,” Francesco advised, “I am useless to protect you.”

I could hear what sounded like gunshots and crying voices, coming ever closer. Soon they were upon us: men and women in an endless line being driven by horned demons. What I’d thought were shots were actually the cracks of the demons’ flaming whips, brought down repeatedly with merciless precision. The seducers were hunchbacked in fear, curling their bodies to stave off the thrashing for an extra half-second. Their arms hung limply, only jerking upwards in their sockets each time the whip connected. Perhaps the seducers had once been of great beauty, but they were no longer; now, they were little more than lumps of well-beaten flesh.

The woman closest to me was struck and blood jumped out of her mouth. When I gasped, she was alerted to our presence. She looked up and I saw that much of her face had been eaten away by maggots. Her right eye looked like a bulging egg and her left one dangled an inch out of the socket on the optical nerve. With her egg-eye, she winked at me lasciviously, and she licked her lips. For this she was whipped to the ground by a legion of demons that didn’t let up even as she lay writhing in agony. Her skin opened in crisscrossing patterns until she was practically spilling out of herself. Dozens of snakes emerged from holes in the ground, twisting up her like chains upon an escape artist.

After she was tightly serpentbound, more snakes-different snakes, with oversized fangs dripping with venom-appeared from the holes and began to roll merrily over her. Eventually a cobra took a position above the seductress’s face, pausing only a moment before it dove down to attack the mongoose of her neck. Spurts of blood cascaded into the air before showering down upon her body, each drop erupting into a tiny bead of fire. Flames quickly engulfed her, and her bulbous eye swelled until it burst like an overfilled balloon. She screamed until her vocal cords were incinerated; all the while, the serpents remained lashed around her body. Her flesh fell away, like tender meat, to expose the skeleton within. Her bones glowed yellow, then red, then black, before finally crumbling into the earth. She disappeared this way, into nothingness-except for what should have been her spine.

Her spine was not a spine; her spine was a snake that looked directly at me from its nest of ash. It flashed a dastardly, reptilian smile, and hissed: AND THERE IS NOTHING YOU CAN DO ABOUT IT.

The snake continued joyfully leering at me even as it began to tremble and new ribs burst forth from its sides like fingers breaking through tightly stretched plastic. Next, arm and leg bones emerged. The ashes of the incinerated sinner began to reconstruct into human tissue, first sifting into intestines, and then weaving into a new circulatory system. Red liquid flowed up out of the ground to enter the new vessels. Muscles twisted around the bones like ivy growing over a fence, and skin pulled up out of the soil like a blanket which tensed itself over the sinewy form. Hair sprouted and new eyeballs gelled in the sockets. The seductress was rebuilt, not into the beaten form I’d first seen, but as she must have looked upon the Earth. She was as physically beautiful as any woman I had ever seen.

She rose from the ground and took a step towards me, her arms held out for an embrace. How alluring she was, with her soft skin and pleasing hips. The demons, who had been tending the other seducers and only now noticed that her rebirth was complete, set upon her again with their whips before she could reach me. She was shepherded back into the procession of sinners and the cycle was made clear to me: she would once again be beaten into pulp, she would once again be bound by the snakes, and she would once again be disintegrated by the fire. It would be repeated over and over, for eternity, just as it would for all the others in this pageant of seducers.

I understood now why Francesco had warned me against this Circle, because it was during the rebirth of the seductress that the healing of my body finalized. The lava flow that was my skin had fully receded and there was no longer any indication that I’d ever been burned. My body was as perfect as it had been on my best day before the accident; the only mark that remained was the scar that I had been born with on my chest. I, like the seductress, had been restored as fully, beautifully human.

Though I didn’t want to, I fell to my knees and started to cry. Once I started I could not stop.

To this day, I remain unsure of the true nature of my tears. Did I cry because the fate of the seductress so closely mirrored my own? Was it the cumulative effect of the horrors in the three Hells that I had experienced? Was it because I’d regained a human form that I had never dreamed would be mine again? Or was it because back in the real world, my body was deep within morphine withdrawal?

I don’t know the answer. But eventually I continued to cry simply from joy that my tear ducts worked again.

Francesco clasped a gentle hand on my shoulder. “Styx lies ahead.”

As disoriented as I was, I knew that something was amiss. After all, I’d heard the story of Inferno in two different lifetimes; I knew we were supposed to have encountered Styx earlier than this. Wiping dry my eyes, I told Francesco as much.

“But this is your journey,” Francesco said, “not Dante’s.”

We moved towards the river’s edge, where a boat was rapidly approaching, as if it knew we were coming. “The boatman is Phlegyas, son of Ares. When his daughter Coronis was raped by Apollo, Phlegyas set fire to the temple of the god. Apollo killed him with arrows and condemned him to this punishment.”

The most striking thing about Phlegyas was the large, angular stone that floated above his fragile skull, looking as if it might drop at any moment. As a result, he constantly lifted his tormented eyes to appraise the situation. With every push of the pole in the water, the ship carried the boatman closer to us and the stone followed, never leaving its tenuous position. Phlegyas had become sallow from so long without sun; the veins of his face stood out like purple spiderwebs and his hair was falling out in stringy bunches. Spindly arms stuck out of his robes, which had long since been stained the color of sweat.

“Who is this, that dares bring an arrow to my shore?” Phlegyas’ attempts to menace were nullified by his preoccupation with the stone above his head. Even as he attempted to glower, his eyes twitched upward with the rock’s every little movement.

“You will have to forgive our foolish friend,” Francesco said, “for he is young and still alive.”

“That does explain much.” Phlegyas nervously bobbed his head to the left, before allowing it to settle back to the center of his shoulders.

“Will you carry us across the water, so that he may finish his journey?”

“Why would I do that? This one is not dead.”

Francesco began to speak. “He is a friend of-”

“Marianne Engel,” Phlegyas cut him off. “This matters not to me.”

The boatman pushed upon his pole to turn the boat around, but Francesco called out, “Much depends on your help, Phlegyas.”

Intrigued, perhaps, Phlegyas turned his face back to us. “And why is that?”

“If you know Marianna, then you know this is a journey of love.”

“What care I for love?”

“Was it not love for your daughter that brought you here? Would you doom another to likewise be trapped forever in Hell, where he does not belong?”

For the first time, Phlegyas seemed to pay more attention to me than to the rock. “Tell me about your love for this woman.”

I answered as sincerely as I could. “I cannot.”

Phlegyas furrowed his brow. “Then why should I honor your request?”

“Any man who believes he can describe love,” I answered, “understands nothing about it.”

This answer seemed to satisfy Phlegyas and he waved us aboard with no need of fare. As we crossed Styx, my eyes were fixed upon the three flaming red towers in the distance.

“Dis,” Francesco said. “The capital of Hell.”

We were let off at a set of enormous iron gates. These were guarded by the Rebellious Angels, whose dark and unsympathetic eyes looked as though they were judging everything. They were naked and sexless, and had glowing white skin beset by large boils; from their backs spanned molting wings and, instead of halos, they had flaming hair.

The leader of the Rebellious Angels stepped forward. “YOU CANNOT PASS. THIS ONE IS NOT DEAD.”

“I get that a lot,” I said.

Francesco shot me a dirty look before turning his attention back to the leader. “That he is living is not your concern. Those rules do not apply at this gate, because it is his fate to enter this door.”

“AND WHO IS HE?”

“The one,” Francesco answered, “who enters the Kingdom of Death in his life.”

It did not matter, however, what he claimed as my identity. With great howling and activity, the Angels refused all that Francesco requested. It was clear that my guide had finally met a barrier through which he could not sweet-talk us.

We stepped away from the Angels to consult with each other. I asked what we could do now, and Francesco looked at me as though my question were exceedingly foolish.

“We will pray,” he said.

When I answered that I did not pray, he sternly rebuked me. “You’re in Hell. You’d better start.”

Francesco took the burning arrow from my hand and plugged its tip into the ground, then laid out the Viking pelts for us to kneel on. Next, he took Sei’s robe from around my waist and promptly began to rip it apart. He wrapped a long, thin strand of fabric around my head until my vision was completely obscured. When I heard the sounds of more wrapping, I assumed that he was covering his own face.

“There will soon be things at which we cannot look,” he said. “Even under the mask, keep your eyes shut tightly.”

It was the first time in my life that I had ever prayed and it felt unnatural, but after all that Francesco had done for me, the least I could do was honor his request. I could hear Francesco’s words, whispered in Italian, as he praised God and asked for guidance. For my part, I prayed for my withdrawal to end. And for the safety of Marianne Engel, wherever she was.

I heard the approach of footsteps and a flickering of something in the air. It came closer, closer…

“Do not look,” Francesco commanded. “They have called upon Medusa.”

And then I realized the source of the flickering sounds: they were made by the tongues of the snakes of her hair. They were thrusting out to smell me, the first living meat to visit Hell in ages, and then a serpent’s tongue tentatively licked my cheek. Then another, and another, and another. My skin, now healed, was fully capable of experiencing sensations again, and what a cruel joke that among them were the kisses of a hundred snakes. They tried to push their triangle heads underneath my blindfold, to lift it up, to make me look at the gorgon, but I held it in place.

Medusa, her face but a few inches in front of mine, began to hiss. Her rancid breath was upon me and I could imagine her own serpentine tongue. “Look. Look at me. You know that you want to. Thiss iss but a fantassy. Will you leave without taking all your dream hass to offer? I will only ssssatisfy your curiosssity…”

I knew better. If ever I were to become a statue, it would be by the hand of Marianne Engel rather than the stare of the gorgon.

A quiver began underneath my feet, like a fledgling earthquake. I could feel the snakes of Medusa’s hair pull away from my face. The shuddering of the earth continued to grow and soon the very air was trembling, as if splitting open to admit something new. The iron gates around Dis clattered as if a wild beast were rattling to get out, and the Rebellious Angels yelped a series of excited bleats. I felt Medusa pull away, and heard her footsteps in a hasty retreat. I thought it might be a trick and asked Francesco if she was really gone.

“I think so, but remain vigilant. It’s best to keep your blindfold on.”

I could hear the branches breaking from the dead trees, and the dust being stirred up from the ground caused me to cough. “What’s happening?”

“I prayed that a Divine Messenger come,” Francesco answered, “but I hesitate to believe that the appeals of one as unworthy as I would be answered.”

Though Medusa might still be lurking, I could not help but remove my blindfold. After all, how often is one given the chance to see a Divine Messenger? The sky, which had been uniformly dark since our entry, now looked as though God had accidentally knocked over the palette of Heaven and every wondrous blush of Existence was plunging from above. On the forward cusp of the colors, with golden streaks trailing behind him, was the most beautiful Being that I’ve ever seen.

Apparently, and despite his own advice, neither could Francesco allow the opportunity to pass untaken. He had removed his mask and was trying not to look directly at the Messenger, as if he wanted to show respect, but found himself unable to not stare. In a voice filled with awe, he said, “Clearly you are blessed.”

I was too bedazzled to do anything more than repeat the word. “Blessed.”

“Michael,” Francesco whispered. “The Archangel.”

Michael was perhaps seven feet tall and his hair flowed behind him like a wild blond river. From his back reached two immaculate wings with a span of at least fifteen feet, and he glided as though the wind existed only to carry his perfect body. His skin was as radiant as the brightest sunlight and his eyes were huge, flaming orbs. Although he shared this trait with Charon, the effect was exactly the opposite: while the boatman’s eyes gave him a sinister look, Michael’s eyes made his face too brilliant to gaze upon directly.

The Archangel landed softly in front of the gates of Dis. The Rebellious Angels, knowing better than to stand in the way, split to either side. The air danced in splendor everywhere around Michael, shimmering as if even it were too awed to touch him. I would describe the colors but there are no names for them; they do not exist within the spectrum of human vision. For the first time I understood how the world must look to the colorblind, because those colors made me feel as if I always had seen, until that moment, with but the tiniest fraction of my potential.

The ground upon which Michael stood was no longer the ashen muck of Hell, but more green than green. The charred trees that had loomed over us with barren limbs now bloomed with fresh leaves. Michael lifted his arm with impossible grace and the gate’s sickly rust was thrown off instantly. When his finger simply grazed the gate, it flew open.

The Archangel turned towards us. Francesco lowered his head and made the sign of the cross. I kept my head up, my eyes focused. Unlike Francesco, because I had never longed to see the divine, I was not burdened with the fear of what might happen if I did.

Michael smiled.

I realized then, for the first time, that I was not hallucinating. I was indeed in Hell, and I was indeed in the presence of the Divine. It was beyond all doubt: I am far too human to imagine anything like that smile. It was like a kiss upon all my worst secrets, absolving them straight away.

With a single sweep of his wings, Michael took flight again, twisting like an immediate tornado that sprang up from the ground. Behind him trailed the colors that he had brought, sucking upwards to disappear in his wake. The too-green of the grass was replaced once again with the dull gray of mud. The health of the trees was leached out. The gates rusted over instantly, but were left open. The colors disappeared like bathwater running to the drain, except that the drain was in the sky. Where Michael disappeared, the last of the colors followed him through a tiny hole in Hell’s awning.

When Francesco finally found his voice, after several stunned minutes, he said, “You must walk through the gates alone.”

I shook Francesco’s hand. It felt such an insufficient gesture, and I told him that I didn’t know how to thank him.

“It is I,” Francesco answered, “who must thank you. It was not only for Marianna that I took this task; it was also repayment.”

“For what?”

“My father was an archer named Niccolo, who was killed while serving in a German condotta. But his friend Benedetto escaped with the help of two German archers, and he brought my father’s crossbow to Firenze.” Francesco, at this point, clasped my hands in his. “That bow was all I ever knew of my father.”

“My copy of Inferno belonged to your father?”

“Yes. He would want you to have it.” Francesco bowed deeply. “Grazie.”

The Rebellious Angels dared not stop me as I walked through the gates. I knew what I was supposed to find next: the Sixth Circle, the home of the Heretics, littered with graves and tombs ringed with fire. But the moment I walked through the gates, I found myself no longer in Francesco’s Inferno. Instead, I emerged on a cliff overlooking an ocean. When I spun around to look behind me, the gates of Dis had disappeared.

Gulls cut over the water with happy squawks. The grass was tinged with cool dew and I could feel every blade tickle the skin of my feet. I was now entirely naked, my skin fully healed; the clothing that I had been wearing was gone, and I no longer had my coin necklace. It was dawn, the breeze cooled me, and I felt wonderfully alive.

Perhaps two hundred feet away on the cliff, a solitary figure stood motionless, looking out over the ocean. Of course I knew who it was. As I drew closer, I saw that she appeared to be in her mid-forties but that there was something infinitely older in her expression, as she squinted over the miles of water. Her hair was pinned to the back of her head, and her shawl was draped over her shoulders, held tightly closed at her bosom. Her dress was worn at the hem and there was dirt on her boots. I spoke her name. “Vicky.”

“Yes.” Her eyes never wavered from their nautical discipline.

“Do you see him?”

“I see him everywhere.”

I looked out towards the horizon. There were no boats on the ocean. There was only the long, lonely expanse of water.

I asked, gently, “Do you think Tom is coming back?”

“Do you think that’s why I stand here?”

“I don’t know.”

A strand of hair unwound from the pin at the back of Vicky’s head. She tucked it back into place. “Of course it is.”

The breeze rustled her dress against her legs. Waves crashed over the rocks below us. For a long time, we did not say a word. I was thinking that I must be nearing the end of my Hellish journey. This is the final ghost. We stood there, commanding that lonely post at the edge of the world, each waiting for something over which we had no power.

“You don’t have the burning arrow,” Vicky said, finally. She was correct. I had left it behind at the gates of Dis, plugged into the ground as my makeshift altar. Perhaps it was burning still, a testament to the fact that I had been there. “It’s no matter. You won’t need it here.”

“What do I do next?”

“Maybe it’s your time to wait too.” She dug the heels of her boots firmly into the ground and set her shoulders more stiffly against the sea breeze. “Love is an action you must repeat ceaselessly.”

In this moment, I was allowed to glance into the grand nothingness of her existence: she really would stand forever, awaiting Tom’s return. As far as I could tell, she hadn’t even noticed my nakedness. I doubted that she noticed anything other than the promise of the water that stretched in front of her.

“This is not my place,” I said.

“Are you sure?”

“I think I’ll head inland.”

She didn’t take her eyes off the sea. “Good luck.”

There was something about the way she wished me luck that I didn’t understand-until I took my first steps. I felt the ground tremble as if something were happening behind me, under me, all around me. I momentarily wondered whether it was the return of Michael, until I saw that the edge of the cliff was shifting. Afraid that it would collapse beneath me, I bolted. There was the tremendous crack of rock breaking away and I churned my legs as quickly as I could. When I looked over my shoulder, I expected to see the cliff falling away behind me.

But the cliff had not fallen away. Its edge was following me, always the same distance behind despite the fact that I was now running. I felt the familiar swish in my spine. I AM HERE.

My first thought was that I might have been running in place, on a sort of soil treadmill, but this was not the case. When I say the edge of the cliff was following me, I mean that literally. The stone constantly changed its shape to stalk me, keeping pace so that I never moved any farther from the precipice. When I veered to one side, the cliff circled like a well-trained sheepdog. THERE IS NOTHING YOU CAN DO ABOUT IT.

I ran for as long as I could, darting this way and that, but the cliff was unrelenting. It doesn’t matter how fast you move, I learned, if you never go anywhere. YOU CANNOT LEAVE. Soon I recognized that I was not in any immediate danger. If the cliff were going to swallow me, it would have done so already. I headed back to where Vicky was standing.

“I tried to leave once too,” she said, “and the cliff followed me.”

“That’s why you stand here?”

“No.”

I looked over the edge of the cliff, to see that at its bottom were rocks that could shred a person.

“If you jump,” Vicky whispered, as if worried that the very stone under our feet would overhear, “you’ll lose the skin that you have regrown and be put back in your burnt body.”

“But this is only a hallucination. None of this is real.”

She shrugged. “Is that what you learned from the Archangel’s smile?”

YOU SHOULD JUMP.

Why would the snake tell me to jump? To cause me pain. That was in the interest of the snake, because the bitch thrived on my pain. I touched my skin where the nerve endings had once been incinerated.

If I jump, I thought, I lose this. I lose my nerves and my hair and my health and my beauty. My fingers and penis will recede again. My face will become weathered granite. My lips will wither, and my voice will be ground back into sharp ugly bits. I’ll become the gargoyle again, but this time by my own choice.

YOU HAVE ALWAYS BEEN A GARGOYLE, BRANDED IN HELL BEFORE YOU WERE EVEN BORN.

I asked Vicky what would happen if I stayed on the cliff.

I WAS NOT PUT IN YOUR SPINE AFTER YOUR ACCIDENT. I HAVE ALWAYS BEEN HERE.

“I think,” Vicky answered, “that Marianne Engel will come for you.”

SHE IS NOT COMING FOR YOU.

“Why do you think that?”

Vicky answered, “Sometimes love outlasts even death.”

HOW COULD SHE LOVE ONE SUCH AS YOU?

I looked into the thrashing tide below us, crashing over the rocks. YOU SHOULD JUMP.Perhaps Vicky is right. Perhaps this is a test of my patience.YOU SHOULD END. Marianne Engel came to me in the hospital when I needed her most, and she will come for me now. Right?

BUT THIS IS NOT EVEN YOUR HELL. YOURS IS YET TO COME.

Hell is a choice.

I THOUGHT YOU DIDN’T BELIEVE IN HELL.

“Vicky,” I asked, “am I dead?”

“I don’t know.”

“Are you dead?”

“Not as long as I wait for Tom.”

I AM THE ONLY ONE WHO REALLY KNOWS YOU.

Sunlight sparkled on the waves. The entire ocean stretched out in front of me.

YOU’VE ALWAYS WANTED TO BELIEVE WE ARE DIFFERENT…

I looked down and-though I can’t explain why I felt it so strongly-I was certain about what I had to do next.

… BUT YOU CANNOT EXIST WITHOUT ME.

A calm entered my body. As my fear left me, it entered the snake. Because the serpent knew that I’d made a decision that was good for me, bad for it.

YOU ARE ME.

I turned to Vicky and asked, “Shall I give your regards to Marianne Engel?”

“Please do.”

THIS IS A MISTAKE.

My legs pushed me up into the air. As I leapt towards the sun, I felt the snake rip backwards out of my body. As I moved forward, the snake could not. It left through my asshole, fittingly enough, yanked out like an anchor plunging from a boat.

There was a brief weightlessness; a balancing point between air and the water waiting below. How strange, I thought, how like the moment between sleeping and falling when everything is beautifully surreal and nothing is corporeal. How like floating towards completion. There was a moment of perfect suspended weightlessness at the top of the arc. Just for this one beautiful moment, I imagined myself moving into the sky forever.

But, as it always does, the battle of gravity won. I was sucked perfectly down and cut the air like a dropped knife, the rush of the water coming up to meet me. Even as I was falling, I knew I was doing the correct thing. I closed my eyes and thought about Marianne Engel.

Contact, and the calm sheen of water opened to envelop me. As I cut the surface, I felt as if I’d come home and I-