Letters From Hades by Jeffrey Thomas Read Free Book Online Page B

cried.

    Day 38.

    T oday Caroline and I set out together for the city the buried African-American man told me about, which Caroline informed me is named Oblivion.
    Caroline, I could see more clearly in the diffused open light, is very short and somewhat overweight, her face pinched and pained, though I could tell under kinder circumstances she would have been attractive. This morning (morning being a subjective term, as there is no day or night here) it bothered her that her tangled red hair was unwashed, and that seemed to be what she most looked forward to upon reaching Oblivion; there would be water there. "But it doesn’t grow longer than the length it was when I died," she explained. "I can shave it all off and it will grow back in a few weeks, but never any longer than it was. Same with my nails. You must have noticed you don’t need to shave."
    "Yeah."
    "And I still have my tattoo." I’d found last night that she has a bumble bee on the back of her right shoulder, which she got when she was twenty-six and drunk. "Astral ink, I guess."
    We’d entered into another forest, but not as thickly wooded as the one I’d come through to reach the volcano, and there was even a broad dirt path through it which we followed, though keeping alert in regard to Demons and Angels. Also, the trees had leaves shaped like oak leaves, some with massive trunks as thick and wrinkled as the legs of dinosaurs, whereas the other forest had been of evergreens. Everpurples, anyway. These trees all had purple leaves. The grass and bushes that bordered the path were also in dark shades of purple, though some shrubs edged toward deep blue and others were almost fully black.
    As we walked, Caroline asked me, "So how did you die?"
    Without looking at her I said, "Self-inflicted shotgun wound."
    Peripherally I saw her look over at me. "How old were you?"
    "Thirty-three."
    "Why’d you do it?"
    "I thought I had nothing to live for."
    "And why did you think that?"
    I hesitated. Then told her, "I wanted to be a writer. Great American novelist. And it wasn’t going so well…"
    "And that’s  why you…"
    "And," I cut her off, "I was working a job I hated, for money that couldn’t cover my bills. And my wife fell in love with a co-worker. Had an affair with him. Left me for him…"
    "Oh. Wow. I’m sorry." She digested this, then meekly asked, "Did you have children?"
    "We had a miscarriage. Year before she left me."
    "Do you still love her?"
    "I’m…not sure." This was the truth. "I guess I’m too busy being in Hell to know how I feel about her anymore."
    "I’m sorry," Caroline said, reaching over to put a hand on my shoulder as we walked.
    Her gentleness touched me; I actually felt choked up. The only real freedom we have here is that we can be kind to each other. Like that African-American man; he couldn’t free his body, but he could free his emotions, and try to help me. It keeps us human, even more so than these sham replica bodies. It’s something that the Demons can’t hack away from us, something they can’t truly understand, because they don’t have it.
    "Nothing to live for," she repeated to herself. "If only we’d known how bad it would be. How death wouldn’t be the ultimate escape. I was afraid that there was no afterlife…terrified of it…but I just couldn’t bring myself to believe in it. And here I am. And it turned out to be real. If only I had been able to believe, I wouldn’t be here right now."
    There was a terrible sound then, that nailed us in our tracks. It was like the howl of a wolf, mixed with the scream of a woman, or the shriek of a banshee.
    "What’s that?" I whispered, looking wildly around me.
    "I think it’s a Demon."
    "Doesn’t sound like the baboons."
    "There are a lot more than them," she hissed. "The Creator gets off on His artistry. There are more than one kind of flower, back home…"
    "Do you want to cut through the forest instead?"
    "Maybe we’d better."
    We went off the path, but snapped