15
Anita
I don't know how much nectar I have had. Not enough, because I can still remember Thor very clearly. Noah promised me I'd forget, but I don’t think I can. Whatever is supposed to be working down here is not working. I’m not surprised. That’s how most things in the world are when it comes to me. My contrariness extends to the underworld, so it seems.
I’m starting to ask myself questions. Questions like, what’s stopping me from leaving, exactly? I don’t know the official way out, but I do know that there’s probably a lot of them. Crichton just snapped one open when he needed it, and nobody seemed to have any issue with that. I’m wondering if the three hundred years thing is more like a guideline than a hard and fast enforced rule.
Time is hard to keep track of here, and I’m frankly not certain how long I have been drinking. There is music, a steady drumbeat that might represent time. I’m yet to make any friends, though Noah said many here knew me. Hell is a surprisingly lonely place.
I go for a walk. The burning lava lakes are nice this time of year, so people keep saying to one another. I find myself indifferent to the suffering of the souls in the lakes and various locations. I suppose I should be horrified. If I were a good person, I would be. But I'm not a person. I never have been — and that explains a lot.
I find myself looking up, my gaze drawn to the surface world I am not permitted to inhabit. The nectar may have taken the edge off my memory, but it has done nothing to stop the yearning grief that lives at my core.
What’s stopping me from leaving, exactly? I don’t know. Escape must be possible. I try to think of ways I've seen escapes take place from prisons. Usually there's some digging involved. I can dig. I can dig straight up. It's a simple, mechanistic solution to the problem, but it might just work.
I start to dig a passage up through the red rock. I do it with my bare hards, clawing at the rock and shoving it to the side. It's surprising how much progress I make in a relatively short period of time.
“There’s no point.”
“What?” I turn my head to look at Noah, who has returned to conveniently spread his message of despair. I wonder if he's watching me. Keeping an eye on me.
“You could dig for a thousand years and never reach the surface. The only way to escape, if that's what you’re trying to do, is to have someone let you out from over there.”
“So someone has to come for me? Has to want me back on Earth?”
“Exactly. Demons are summoned. If someone up there wants you, you’ll be back before you know it. If you’ve been forgotten, you’ll be here for three hundred years.”
"But someone would have to know I’m a demon — and I didn't even know that. So…”
“Yes. Very difficult. Anyway…” He wanders off, leaving me with aching fingers and a great deal of red dust in every orifice.
Will someone summon me? Thor won’t. He doesn't know to. Bryn won’t. He doesn't want me back. Anita won’t. I have so few allies in the world, no friends, and maybe…
Wait. There’s something in my hole. Something is coming wriggling through it. Several somethings. Wriggling things, making their way through the rock and soil. I recoil and think about hitting the wriggling things, but they swiftly become fingers, and then a hand.
I can’t see a face. I can't see anything more than an understated brown suit and a perfectly pressed cuff, but I know who it is immediately. I grab that hand. I am dragged up through the soil of Hell, my being dragged from one world to another. It hurts. It hurts like nothing I have ever felt before. Everything in me tells me to let go, that the pain will stop if I just resign myself to my fate.
But there's no way I am doing that. This pain is the price that has to be paid for getting free. I cling to the hand. I hold onto it for dear life. And suddenly, as if the universe has finally accepted that my will is stronger than death, the pain ends and I emerge through a familiar floor, into a cell I once occupied a literal lifetime ago.
Crichton still has my hand. I can't let go. My fingers are cramped around his in a death grip. He doesn't seem to mind.
“It is good to see you again, miss,” he says in that understated English way of his.
“Fuck that,” I say, leaping on him. I hold onto him just as hard as I held onto Thor. Maybe harder. This demon has been nothing short of my salvation. “Thank you so much. I owe you more than I can say, I…"