“Oh. But what if I fell in love with someone up there?”
“We all fall in love all the time. But we know we can't hold onto that love. It's just how it is. Tell you what, torture a few unfortunates and you’ll feel better, I guarantee it.”
“Wait, how long did you say I have to stay down here?”
“Three hundred years."
"So ten generations. That's a lot of generations.”
“Sure. If you're lucky, you can sometimes sleep with the great, great, great, great, great, great, great, great, great grandson or daughter of the one you loved before. It's a trip. Humans always underestimate how strong genetic influence is. I once had sex with a woman in ancient Egypt, and then fucked her descendant in the 1950’s and they both came exactly the same way…"
He reminisces, and I do what demons do best. I start to scheme.
Thor is going to be worried sick about me. He’s not going to know what happened. I don’t know what happened. One moment I was wandering miserably in the woods, and the next…
Here I am, respawning in the lake of fire. The demon Noah might be right. This does feel natural. Uncomfortably comfortable, even. But I don't want to be here. I want to be with Thor. I want him to know I didn’t run away and leave him. We were having a fight, and now that seems stupid. I was asking so much from him. I was demanding he have no curiosity about me and simply love me without thought. I couldn’t give him one evening to come to terms with the revelations we’d come to. No. I wanted an instant happily ever after, and when I didn’t get it, I went and jumped in a lake. Or rather, I fell.
“Noah?”
“Yes?”
“I can’t go back to the human realm?”
“Not yet. You have to do your shifts first. A hundred years of torture, a hundred years of mockery, and a hundred years of petty bureaucracy. The latter is more painful than anything else, for you, and for the souls we are bound to punish.”
“Alright, but what about goddesses. There’s one up there I’d like to reckon with.”
“Do not cross goddesses. Ever. We have a reputation for being unnecessarily cruel, but they take the entire proceedings to greater heights than even I can fathom.”
“You mean perhaps, like telling someone to go for a walk in the woods knowing they’ll fall into the same icy lake their lover’s family perished in long ago?”
“Sure. That sounds like a goddess prank.”
“Prank! I’m fucking dead!”
“You're not. Nobody is, technically. When it comes to the human realm, the rest of us are simply… absent. Now. Come. You look like you need a drink.”
“A drink, after drowning?”
“We enjoy irony down here.”
I follow him along the red rock paths carved into the underworld’s geography. This place is orderly, but in a way I can’t quite understand right now. There's something strange about the way the path rises and then falls and then turns about on itself and somehow I feel like I am upside down, then right side up again. It's very disorienting, but it doesn't seem to bother anybody else, so I don’t let it bother me.
There is an opening carved into the wall. It is ornate, the kind of work that only happens when there’s an abundance of time for overly talented people to undertake it. The human world is full of old works like this, but the newer buildings are all so ugly. Practical. Rushed. The world would be so much more beautiful if it was more like Hell.
I catch myself giggling at that thought as I am led into a raucous, rowdy tavern. Everybody is naked. I am naked too, now I think about it. I don't know why I didn't think about it before. I suppose it seemed natural.
WELCOME HOME! The message is carved into rocks hanging just inside the entrance to the subterranean bar.
“Is the sign for me?”
“Yes. But also, no. We have a constant stream of returnees. At first, we held welcome back parties, but over time they started blending into one another until it was basically one big welcome back party, so we decided to make the sign a little more permanent. It gives the humans hope for us to crush too, so that is nice.”
“Nice,” I agree, absent-mindedly.
The bar is full of demons, none of whom look greatly distinguishable from humans. I suppose that's why I never noticed I was one, even when people called me one to my face.
“Here. Drink.” Noah shoves a massive tankard over to me.
“What is this?”
“Nectar. It’s sweet, but calories don't matter here, and diabetes doesn’t exist. Drink up. It will help you forget."
I had just raised the tankard to my lips. At those words, I put it back down again. I don't want to forget. And I don't want to be here, as comfortable as here already feels. I want to be back with Thor.