To Hell with Jesus’ Son
Jack, the Son of the Son of God, intended to go to hell.
“Why the fuck do you want to go there?” I gasped. He had to be joking.
Jack, my husband Bob, the redeemed angel Lucifer and I were gathered in our living room in Slack Heaven. Jack had called a very important secret meeting, apparently to plot an infernal break-in.
“They finally nabbed Jean-Paul,” Jack said. “He’s my friend. I want to get him out.”
“Who?” Bob asked.
“Jean-Paul Sartre,” I explained. “French philosopher. We used to hang out with him back in the globe. But what the fuck is he doing in hell? He was walking around free the last time we saw him.”
“Dude, that guy was such a cheat,” Lucifer grumbled. “He renounced Jesus, but kept finding ways to trick me out of his soul. Beat me in a dueling piano contest. Trapped me in a magic bag for awhile. Bet me I couldn’t spend one night with his girlfriend. I know I’m a good guy now, but I can’t say I’m sad to hear another Satan finally caught up with him.”
“Well, you’re going to help me rescue him,” Jack said.
“Yes, my Dude,” Lucifer acquiesced.
“No!” I insisted. “This is a terrible idea! Jean-Paul was an ok guy, no doubt. Fun at parties. But your Dad gave him his chance, and he turned it down. You’re gonna get trapped and tortured and we’re going to be helpless to do anything about it!”
“I’ll be fine,” Jack insisted. “I’ve got better control of my transfiguration power than ever. Worst case scenario, I get zappy, and we get another Lucifer to carry our luggage. We’ve got nothing to worry about.”
“How are you even planning to get in?” I asked. “Your Dad had to get crucified to sneak his way in. What’re you going to do, throw down with some Pharisees?”
Jack looked at Lucifer.
“Every hell has a side entrance,” Lucifer admitted. “You know, for deliveries, smoke breaks, Italian poets, that sort of thing. You tell me which hell we’re going to, and I can make a pretty good guess where that Satan would put it. They’re all me, after all.”
“And how do you expect to find Jean-Paul once you get in there?” I asked.
“We always put the philosophers near the entrance,” Lucifer explained. “They’re a bad influence on the other inmates.”
“I want to go to hell!” Bob said.
“No!” I shouted.
“I always wanted to see it! It sounds cool!” Bob said. “It’s not like I’d be stupid enough to ever go there on my own. But what’s the point in knowing a Christ if you can’t even get a safe escort through hell out of it? C’mon, Leif. When else am I going to get this chance? I want to see the torture! Pleeeeeeease?”
“It’s fine by me,” Jack said. “Strength in numbers.”
“I can’t believe I’m even having to argue this!” I whined.
“You can stay here,” Jack offered. “Keep an eye on the place while we’re gone. I know you’re kind of sensitive about the scary stuff.”
“I’m not sensitive! I just know this is an awful idea! I’m not going to let the two men I love most in this world walk into hell and leave me behind!”
“Great!” Jack said. “Then we’re all in!”
“DAMMIT!” I huffed.
I’d won a lot of arguments with Bob and Jack through the years, but I could tell I wasn’t winning this one. My brain dusted off a high school memory of a nun warning me what would happen if I kept “playing” with the other boys. I never thought it would go down like this, though.
Jack had learned of Jean-Paul’s fate via a letter the philosopher recently sent him. Things didn’t sound so bad based on the letter, actually. Sartre’s biggest complaint was the lack of a toothbrush. But I supposed his jailers were probably reading all outgoing communications, so we couldn’t take it at face value. Helpfully, the letter at least included a return address.
Stealth was essential. Bob picked out drab clothes that Lucy promised would blend in anywhere in hell. Jack had the caretaker bears dig a secret tunnel between our suite and the hangar so we could slip out unnoticed. We were taking the Eagle’s Wing to get there; it was our slowest ship, but it had a cloaking device. That dredged up bad memories from my third life, which didn’t help my mood. Worst of all, though, we were staying sober to keep our wits about us. We hadn’t even gotten to hell yet, and it already felt like punishment.
On the flight there, the other guys toughened themselves up by sharing horror stories of the worst atrocities they had seen. Lucifer was quickly disqualified from the one-upmanship, on account of his previous occupation. I sat on the observation deck, staring out the window and trying to block out their conversation. My friends had seen some dark shit.
We passed over a desert landscape with a dirty, hazy sky. Jagged black mountains loomed in the distance. Jack came over to see how I was doing.
“Is that where we’re going?” I asked.
“No, that’s...someone else’s territory,” Jack said. “They’re monotheorists, and their idol is barbaric. It’s the closest you can get to hell without it being officially hell. They technically follow Dad’s bare minimum rules—they don’t snatch anybody, you’ve got to go there willingly. But if you do, the only way you get out is painfully. They’ll be happy to cut off your hands or throw you off a building if you offend them, and they take pleasure in murdering nonbelievers. I’m happy to leave it to the other idols keep them in check; I ain’t touching them with a ten thousand foot pole. I don’t even want to name them.”
“What, like they worship Voldemort or something?”
“Yeah, let’s go with that. They’re the Voldemorts.”
I found it strangely comforting that there was a place that upset Jack more than where we were going. I tried to cling to that, but it didn’t really help.
The landscape shifted to a forest of twisted dead trees, no less desolate, and we landed.
“This way,” Lucifer said, taking the lead. There was no path. There were no signs of life anywhere around us. The sky was blank, and the ground was nothing but sharp stones. There was no sound except the crunching of our steps and my own breath rattling in my head. We passed a wooden sign with bloody letters written on it.
“There is no end,” Bob read out loud.
“That could be a good thing, right?” I asked. “Like, yay eternal life?”
We trudged along until we came upon another sign.
“To all this hate and fear,” Bob read.
“Oh,” I said.
“Sounds like Nine Inch Nails lyrics,” Jack mused.
We passed a few more signs.
“Abandon all hope...”
“Ye who enter here...”
“Burma Shave.”
“The corporate sponsorship makes it more evil,” Lucifer explained.
As we continued on, we were hit by an overwhelming rancid smell.
“Oh, fucking gross!” I gagged.
“I think I’m gonna puke,” Bob groaned.
“Hold it together, dudes,” Jack said.
I pulled my shirt up over my nose and tried to breath through my mouth. We had come upon a stagnant stream. The first signs of life we saw were not welcome ones—scum on the water and swarms of mosquitos.
“We got any bug spray?” I asked, swatting at them.
Bob spit out something that had flown into his mouth.
“They can’t bite through the skin of our Rapture™ bodies,” Jack said. “But be careful not to touch the water, it’ll erase your memory. Lucy, you got the sandals?”
Lucifer pulled four pairs of sandals from his backpack and handed them out.
“What’re these?” I asked.
“They’re Nike’s,” Jack said, sliding them on and handing his shoes over to Lucifer. “She traded them to me for a few ounces of Slack Heaven Special. They’ll keep our feet dry. C’mon.”
Jack started to walk across the surface of the water. Bob and Lucy followed.
“It’s all just technology,” I reassured myself, repeating one of Jack’s favorite phrases as I followed. Walking on water felt no different than walking on linoleum, but I was terrified I would suddenly forget how to walk and fall in. Thinking about walking doesn’t help you walk, either, so my fear nearly became a self-fulfilling prophecy. Bob put his arm around my shoulders to help steady me.
We got to the other side and climbed up a steep muddy bank that threatened to send us tumbling back down. The ground leveled off, and we left the dead forest. A rocky plain stretched as far as we could see. The sky churned with brown and yellow clouds. A whipping wind carried the smell of rotten eggs, but by this point I greeted it like a fresh breeze.
“You’ll want to put your shoes back on, dudes,” Lucifer said, handing them back out. “Hell is not a place to walk around open-toed. And you’ll need these.”
He handed us each worn-down passports.
“Zeef,” I said, reading the name on mine.
“I’m Beobblebub!” Bob said.
“G’ack,” Jack read. “Easy enough to remember.”
“I tried to find the closest matches I could, so it won’t arouse suspicion if you call each other by name,” Lucifer said.
“Where’s yours?” I asked.
“This is as far as I can go,” Lucifer said. “The devils would recognize me, and I’d blow your cover. But I sewed tracking devices into your clothes. When you’re ready to go, you’ve just got to make it to the border and I’ll pick you guys up.”
I couldn’t help but feel suspicious, even though his reasoning was sound. Were we walking into a trap?
“Flashlights for the mundane humans,” Lucifer said, handing them to me and Bob. We clipped them to our belts.
“Aaaaand, I think that’s it!” Lucifer announced. “Head that way for a few kilometers until you hit the tracks, then follow them to the next platform and take the train to the end of the line. Remember, don’t eat or drink anything, and try to stick together. I’m going to be worried about you dudes.”
“We’ll be fine,” Jack said. “Just be ready to go when we are.”
“Absolutely, my Dude,” Lucifer said. “Oh, one last thing—try not to die in there. Resurrecting inside hell could get, uh, complicated. Good luck!”
He turned and walked back into the dead forest.
We trudged along the scorched and barren plain, existential dread building with every step. Every fiber of my being told me to head back. To run for my life. To definitely not go one more inch forward. Only my love for Bob and Jack kept me going.
We spotted the raised cement platform before we even saw the tracks, and we headed directly toward it. The stairs were crumbling, but I thought better of touching the rusty railing as we climbed up. And then we waited.
“Oh!” Bob said. He took off his pentacle necklace, turned it upside down and put it back on.
“Good call,” Jack said.
“Just remember to switch it back when we get out of here,” I said. Bob rolled his eyes.
We waited some more.
Bob started to whistle. I recognized the tune immediately.
“Really, dude?” I asked.
“Who’s gonna hear us?” Bob asked, continuing to whistle.
“People listen attentively,” Jack sang quietly with a smile, “I mean about future calamity...”
They kept going. I had to admit, my spirits lifted. I couldn’t help but join in on the chorus.
“Now you make the scene all day, but tomorrow there’ll be hell to pay!”
Soon all three of us were dancing around the platform as a swing band played in our imaginations.
Jack sang out to the void, “Now the D and the A and the M and the N and the A and the T and the I-O-N! Lose your face, lose your name, then get fitted for a suit of flaaaaaaame!”
We all doo-doo-doot-do-dooted the remaining bars of the song, then burst out laughing.
Just as I was feeling a moment of relief, we heard the train whistle in the distance, and the tension came rushing back. We swiftly composed ourselves.
It was an old-timey steam locomotive, belching out black smoke. It screeched to a stop, an open door right in front of us. There was no sign of a conductor, or anyone else. None of us moved.
“Saviors first,” I said nervously, nudging Jack forward.
We climbed into the railcar.
There were bloody handprints everywhere, and the floor was sticky with it. There were also puddles of what I was pretty sure was urine. The train lurched forward, and I had to grab onto the back of a bench not to fall. Had I not been in a superpowered body, I would have gotten a handful of splinters.
We could see a few other passengers in the dim light. There was an enormously obese wheezing man in a sweat-soaked suit, struggling for every breath. There was an elderly woman in a black dress whose eyes were sewn shut, though her head turned to keep looking at us as we passed. A young girl muttered to herself as she pulled out strands of her hair and ate them. One bench just had an unmoving skeleton leaning against the wall, skull pointed to look out the window.
We found two benches facing each other and sat down. A man in a spotless grey military uniform walked into the car and headed directly for us.
“Papers, bitte,” he said in a surprisingly polite manner.
We handed our passports over. He examined them skeptically.
“Vhat are your names?” he asked.
“G’ack.”
“Luh—Zeef,” I stuttered.
“I’m Beobblebub!” Bob smiled.
The soldier looked over the passports some more, and I thought my heart might never beat again.
“Zey are older papers, but zey check out,” he said, handing them back. “Vilkommen to Hell, meine Herren!”
We sat in silence. I tried not to move at all. It felt like the slightest noise would lead to damnation. The train car door opened, and a woman pushing a cart entered.
“Coffee! Bile! Snacks!” she called out, making her way down the aisle. “Toasted eyeballs! Fresh liver! Magazines!”
The cart reached us.
“Anything from the trolley, dears?” she asked. Half of her face was rotting away, nothing but bone and putrid flesh. A maggot crawled out of her empty eye socket.
“No thanks,” Jack said.
“Are you sure? I have candied testicles...”
“We’re saving our appetite for when we get there,” Jack said.
“Suit yourself,” she said, moving along.
“How long did Lucy say this trip was?” I asked.
“He didn’t,” Jack said.
I whimpered, put my hands behind my head and leaned into Bob’s chest, trying to hide from everything. He rubbed my back gently in a failing bid to sooth me. I didn’t know if I could take any more of this. The whole thing had been a stupid idea from the start, and it was an even stupider idea for me to come along. I struggled to hold back my tears. Every cha-chunk of the train on the rails was jarring. But with Bob and Jack both watching over me, my body took the only escape route it had, and I fell asleep.
I sat up awake when I heard Bob snoring. Jack was slumped over asleep as well. Outside the window was pitch black, interrupted by flashes of lightning. I saw bloody bodies strapped and stretched over rain-slicked black rocks. And then with a flash, right there on the other side of the window, I saw the grinning face of Satan.
“Wakeupwakeupwakeup!” I cried as loudly as I dared, shaking Bob, who gave a big yawn and stretched. I kicked Jack in the shin, and he startled awake. With a quivering hand, I pointed out the window. Another flash of lightning revealed more of the tortured bodies on the rocks.
“Sweet,” Bob said.
“N-no, there was—” I gasped, nearly hyperventilating.
“Final stop!” announced a spike-covered devil in a conductor’s cap as he hustled down the aisle.
“There was a Satan right outside the window!” I hissed as the train screeched to a stop.
“We’re in hell,” Jack said flatly. “Satan is everywhere here. Hopefully he recognizes me and stays out of our way, if he knows what’s good for him. C’mon.”
The conductor leaned over the skeleton.
“Move along, buddy,” he said. “Don’t care where you’re going, but you can’t stay here!”
He gave the skeleton a shake, and the skull rolled off and onto the floor.
We walked the other way and exited the train.
The train station was crowded, and I really didn’t want to know with what. I just squeezed onto Bob’s hand for dear life and looked at my shoes until we were out on the street.
We were in a mid-twentieth-century European city, Paris was my guess. Cobblestone streets covered in oily puddles cut through a canyon of buildings with broken and boarded up windows. There were flickering streetlamps and parked cars ripped right out of a film noir. The pedestrians all looked down and walked fast. Only some of them were human.
“Where to next?” Bob asked.
“Not sure,” Jack said.
My attention was caught by a beautiful well-dressed woman sitting at a cafe table a few feet away. She was staring across at an empty seat, a forced smile frozen on her face. With a trembling hand, she lifted a teacup and took a sip, leaving a line of brown sludge on her upper lip. Still smiling, a tear rolled down her cheek.
“Oh for fucks sake,” Bob said, “I’ll ask someone.”
Jack and I watched as Bob strode purposefully across the street to a man with a toothbrush mustache painting a still life of dog shit. Bob spoke with him, and the man said something and pointed down the street. Bob waved to him with a smile and walked back over to us.
“He was really nice, actually,” Bob said.
“Dude, I think that was literally Hitler,” I said.
“Whatever, I’ve met worse,” Bob said. “Come on, it’s two blocks this way.”
Bob lead us to a decrepit gothic mansion surrounded by a decaying garden and a wrought-iron fence. Much to my dismay, we went inside.
Inside was dark. Bob and I turned on our flashlights, and Jack began to glow—I could easily guess which emotion was driving his light. The hallway before us was draped in spider webs.
“Why did it have to be spiders?” I groaned.
“It’s millipedes, too!” Bob said, his flashlight beam following the scurrying creatures on the wall.
Any other time, I might’ve been annoyed by my husband’s penchant for the macabre. But he put his hand on my shoulder, and I felt his courage. With Jack in front of me and Bob protecting my rear, I was able to move forward. I kept my eyes as closed as I could while still seeing Jack’s shimmering form in front of me.
We made our way up a staircase. On the second-floor landing, Jack stopped.
“Fucking hell,” Jack muttered, forcing me to look up.
Light showed through the crack underneath the third-story door. Someone was up there. But the stairs up to the third story had collapsed. We pointed our flashlights down, and couldn’t see the bottom.
“Hello?” Jack called out, but there was no answer.
“What now?” I asked.
“I think we climb,” Jack said. He grabbed a wooden support beam running along the exposed inner wall and swung out over the black shaft.
I didn’t even have the words left to object.
“You’re doing ok, dear,” Bob reassured me. “I’m right behind you.”
I strapped my flashlight to my belt, grabbed the wall and followed Jack.
My fingers were on fire as I inched along. There were some things even a fully maxed body just wasn’t meant to do. If I were in my original body, I’d already be dead. Somehow, I made it onto the third-story landing. Bob was still only halfway across.
“Whoops!” Bob said, his flashlight slipping off his belt and falling into the darkness below. We did not hear it land.
Then there was a loud crack.
My body moved before I could think. The next thing I knew, Bob was dangling over the bottomless pit, his hand clasped in mine, as the beam we had been climbing along tumbled down behind him.
“Thanks!” he said, smiling up at me.
I pulled him up and kissed him, and we kissed like we hadn’t kissed in centuries. Tears were rolling down my cheeks. I put my hand on the back of his head and pushed his lips into mine, then I collapsed against his shoulder, sobbing.
“It’s ok, you’re doing good,” Bob whispered. “We’re almost there.”
I pushed back my fear as fast as I could and looked up to Jack.
“Sorry,” I said.
Jack offered me his hand, and they both helped me to my feet. Together, we walked through the door to the third story.
Jack let his light dim as our eyes adjusted to the well-lit hallway. In the distance, we heard the muffled sound of laughter from a large crowd.
“Oh, you dear silly man,” echoed the amplified, stilted voice of a terrible actress, “do you think I could love a coward?”
Another roar of laughter from the crowd.
We were at one end of a wide hallway with ornately patterned carpet and wallpaper. We walked along it until we reached a perpendicular hallway, with a door where the hallways met. Jack cracked the door open, and the sound of the audience hit us full force. Jack waved us quickly into the theater and shut the door behind him.
I had no idea how we’d gone from a haunted mansion to a theater, but it seemed like the sort of thing one could expect in hell. We were standing at the back of a balcony box seat. The audience on the main floor was entirely demonic. On stage, an actor and two actresses stood woodenly in front of three couches. All of the performers had looks of desperation that didn’t seem to be part of the show.
“You’re soft and slimy! Ugh!” the actor said to one of the actresses. “Like an octopus! Like a quagmire!”
The audience howled with delight.
“Jack! My dear boy!” came a voice from beside us. “Whatever are you doing here?”
Jean-Paul Sartre, a short man with thinning hair and circular black glasses, stood to greet us.
“We’re here to rescue you!” Jack said.
“Rescue me?” Jean-Paul asked. “Why would you do that?”
Jack just stood there, mouth agape. This was not the reaction any of us were expecting.
“Quick, come out to the hall where we can talk,” Sartre said, “before someone sees you.”
“I’ll put up with any torture you impose,” the actor on stage said unconvincingly. “Anything would be better than this agony of mind...”
The audience guffawed as the door shut again behind us.
“Now, what makes you think I want to be rescued?” Sartre said.
“It’s, uh, hell?” Jack proposed. “I assumed you were being tortured...”
“Oh, I’m being tortured, all right,” Sartre scoffed, looking back at the theater. “Or at least, my life’s work is...”
“It’s not supposed to be a comedy, I take it?” Bob asked.
“It’s certainly not supposed to be a tragedy,” Sartre said, “yet that’s what they’re making of it.”
“But they’re not, like, hurting you?” Jack asked.
“Oh, there are racks and red-hot pincers and other such paraphernalia, if that’s what you mean,” Sartre said. “It makes for a welcome reprieve between this and delivering lectures on Being and Nothingness to a classroom of imps and gremlins. But even so, I’ve no need of rescuing.”
“But your letter...” Jack said.
Sartre laughed. “My dear boy, I just wanted to let you know about the change of address! That said, you didn’t happen to bring a toothbrush, did you?”
“So you’re really not going to come with us?” Jack asked.
“Absolutely not,” Sartre said.
“But...why?” Jack asked, flabbergasted.
“Because here I am free,” Sartre said. “Jack, my friend, I appreciate the effort, I really do. But please understand, I turned down your father of my own free will. Because if I let him save me, then he would always see me, do you understand? Here, I am not seen. They can shit on my words, they can peel the skin from my back, but they can never really see me. Not the way your father can. And to be truly seen—that is the greatest prison of them all, is it not? How can my mind soar in the infinite possibilities of the universe, if it is always to be weighed down by God’s image of me?”
“Dude, I’m sorry,” Jack said, “but I really have no idea what you’re talking about.”
Sartre sighed.
“Few do, I’m afraid.”
“There’s no need for red-hot pokers,” we heard the actor shout. “Hell is other people!”
The audience burst into cheers and applause.
“You’d better go,” Sartre said. “They always acknowledge the author during the curtain call. I got a good thing going here. Please don’t ruin it.”
“Ok, fine,” Jack sighed. “Stay in touch, I guess?”
Sartre reached up and patted Jack on the cheek.
“It really is good to see you, my boy,” he said. “Now, your best bet for getting out of here is to head down this hall and take a right. Be safe!”
“You too,” Jack said.
Sartre went back into the theater.
“Well, let’s get on with it,” the actor said.
I grabbed both of my men’s hands and began dragging them down the hall.
“Time to go now!” I insisted.
I was a man on a mission, and I had to ride this wave of bravery while it lasted. We were finally headed in a direction I wanted to go. I made a right as instructed, and the elegance of the theater transitioned back to the crumbling exposed walls of a dilapidated house, but I didn’t care. I had to stop holding hands when we got to the stairs, but I stood behind Jack and Bob and made sure they kept moving down. We got to the bottom. I saw the front door at the end of the hallway and plowed forward. I was stopped in my tracks by...a Peter Bro?
The young man was wearing the kind of tacky custom-tailored suit that St. Peter’s henchmen were known for, consisting in this case of a flame print rising up from the bottom of a turquoise jacket. But his jaw hung slackly open, his bloodshot eyes stared right through us, and he was hovering a few inches above the floor.
“Hey guys, have you seen my glasses?” said a loud squeaky voice as the Peter Bro’s body shook up and down like a rag doll. “The old Pebble said it was really important not to lose them!”
Into the light of the vestibule chandelier stepped the disgusting and vile figure of Satan—twisted horns, cloven hooves, scabby phallus and all. His hand was shoved into the back of the Peter Bro like a ventriloquist dummy. And he was wearing sunglasses indoors.
“OHFUCKOHFUCKOHFUCK!” I shouted, running the other way.
Many things happened at once. Satan tossed the Peter Bro’s body aside. Jack flared bright and shot a beam of light directly at Satan, who laughed and flexed his muscles, protected by the mercyte glasses. My husband picked up a broken two-by-four and ran forward, hollering like a berserker. And a dozen dirt-covered arms reached around from behind me and pulled me into the wall.
I felt the horrifying rough hands all over my body. All I could see was darkness. I tried to scream, but dirty fingers stuck into my mouth and pulled it open. More fingers went into my nostrils and ears. A hand grabbed my balls and twisted hard, and I saw stars from the pain of it.
I landed hard on a dusty concrete floor, curling up with nausea and coughing up what tasted like blood. Through blurry vision I saw a figure in a patent leather body suit standing under a bare bulb, his blue face covered in pins.
“We must take this slowly,” he said with a dread-inducing voice. “This one is special. His suffering will taste divine.”
I scrambled to my feet and ran in the opposite direction, stuck in a maze of short halls that seemed to defy physics in their arrangement. I was stopped again by the apparition of a girl in a nightgown, long dark hair hiding her face. She leapt onto the ceiling and began scurrying toward me on all fours.
I sprinted away down another hallway, knowing nothing but panic and pain. A quick glance behind me revealed I was being chased by a bald clown in a black and white clown suit with a tiny top hat strapped to his head. He had an exaggerated grin, blood-crusted teeth outlined in thick black makeup.
I reached a T-intersection. A man in a hockey mask barreled down on me with a machete from my left, but I dodged him and scrambled down the hall to my right. I was stopped by four knives being shoved into my gut.
I was face-to-face with a terrifying visage, burned and scarred and smiling maniacally. And somehow I’d known, I’d always known, ever since I was five years old hiding under the covers of my bed, that one day this man in a red-and-green striped sweater and a fedora would get me. This was how I was destined to die. I choked, unable to speak as blood poured from my mouth.
“Aw, quit your belly-aching,” the monster laughed.
He pulled his gloved hand from my body, and I stumbled backwards. I wasn’t even in pain any more, just completely in shock. Looking down, I saw I was holding my own intestines in my hands. All I could think was that you can’t just put those back the way they were. I screamed in horror and collapsed.
There were several brilliant flashes of white light. The next thing I knew, Jack was cradling me in his arms. He looked me in the eyes.
“You’re going to be alright,” he said.
Without breaking eye contact, Jack placed his hand on my stomach and began to glow. I was filled with relief, joy and love. I looked down and saw my shirt ripped open to reveal unscarred abs, slightly pink but otherwise no worse for the wear.
Remembering that I had abs gave me a second wind.
“Are you alright?” Bob asked, running over and helping me to my feet. He was shirtless, grinning and absolutely soaked in blood.
“Yeah, are you?” I asked.
“I’ve never felt more alive!” he roared, a wild gleam in his eyes.
Standing where my would-be murderer had been, there was now a man in a yellow and blue body suit, chomping on a cigar. He had bushy sideburns, a black pointy mask and blades extending from the knuckles of his clenched fists. He was joined by a long-haired man in a hockey mask, but the machete was gone; instead, this man had a baseball bat in one hand and a hockey stick in the other. From down the hall came the sounds of a cackling demonic hoard.
“Go on,” growled the man with the cigar. “We’ll cover your escape.”
Jack, Bob and I ran for our lives down the hall. At every intersection, a helpful friend was there to show us the way. A clown in a blue suit with a fringe of long red hair, a big red nose and a wide jolly red mouth pointed us left. An anthropomorphic potato with googly eyes, thick lips and large shoes directed us up some stairs. A friendly, wispy white apparition beckoned us forward.
We didn’t notice that the friendly ghost was hovering above a foggy empty void until all three of us were tumbling down through it.
I landed with a thunk, but I had no idea what I landed on. As far as I could tell, I was flying through the clouds on some kind of invisible platform. Looking to either side, I could see Bob and Jack had landed there as well.
“It’s the Eagle’s Wing!” Jack laughed. “Lucifer made it! Thank Grandpa, he made it!”
We stood up. Bob stumbled over and wrapped his arms around me. I didn’t care that he was soaked in blood, I hugged him right back. Jack wrapped his arms around us both. We were all laughing and crying.
“Oh my gods, Leif, you should’ve seen it!” Bob bragged. “I totally kicked Satan’s ass!”
“Enough to get those sunglasses off, at least,” Jack said, then he let out a triumphant scream of relief. “Wooooooo!”
“I love you both so much!” I cried, pulling them in for another hug.
The ship ascended into a blue sky, and we flew over fluffy white clouds and felt the warmth of the sun again.
“I told you, Leif,” Bob said cockily, “we had nothing to worry ab—”
Bob slipped in the blood pooling at his feet and slid right over the edge of the ship.
“BOB!” I yelled, leaping over the edge after him.
What else was I supposed to do? I’d gone through hell for the guy. Skydiving without a parachute was nothing.
Next: The Friar and Jesus’ Son
Doing Drugs with Jesus’ Son is always free.