New Hire In The Deeps

If there were foreboding signs on that morning, I missed them. I hardly paid attention to where I was going at the time, but I do not credit the mistake to the way my mind operates during the week. I had no coffee that morning, rushing into the office after a betrayal of my phone. It died during the night, reminding me to feed it as I danced in my REM cycles. It was too late in the morning to give it any juice, and it set the precedent for the rest of the morning.

At the very least, the train was on time, filled with people rushing about in the same huff, but they were just going about their day. They had nary an inkling of what was about to happen, and where I’d end up. I got out of the subterranean system of machinery and considered grabbing a quick coffee at the corner cart. No. I’d get some of the machine-brewed corporate-provided darkness-in-a-cup instead, or so I thought.

There, in the lobby was a guy right about my age, perhaps younger. Not a bad looking face and hair, just a little morbid. His eyes were sullen, with a dark puffy rings underneath. I realized I must have looked the same at the time, forgetting to layer on my makeup. As he hurried onto the elevator while pulling the hood over his head, I followed suit to a moment of awkward silence within. His hand shot out to stop the door from closing.

“This one’s going down,” he said, a voice song-like in my tired brain. The combination of tones coming out of his mouth felt softer than a regular voice.

“I’m going down, too,” I lied. “Probably to the same place you are.”

“Oh?” He asked with a smug look on his face. I grimaced at his snide joy.

“Yes,” I doubled-down on the lie. “I’m starting downstairs today. We’re going to the same place.” His hand retreated as the doors closed. After all, how far down could the elevator go anyway? This was not some subterranean laboratory, just a standard building. He pressed a button and stood away from the controls, leaning in the corner of the elevator with a sense of glee in the corner of his mouth. With the hood on, he looked younger, like a kid just out of high school.

The elevator lurched to a sinking feeling which lasted longer than I expected. It felt like we descended quite deep, but I was certain that was on account of the basement's high ceilings for storage of machinery and such. After what felt like minutes, the sound system gave off a tired bell and the doors slid apart. There was nothing beyond. The doors just opened to empty darkness, casting the weak yellow light from within. Without a moment of hesitation, the guy flexed his neck a few times to several loud cracks and walked out into the unknown.

“You coming?” He asked just in front of the elevator doors. “You said you were heading down where I was, didn't you?” The smug way he phrased it irked me. It was as if he knew I lied, but it had to be just the initial part of the basement that had motion activated lights as you walked in further. I followed him out of the elevator, watching as the doors closed to just a crack of light painting a line into the darkness in front of us.

“The lights are motion activated, right?” He let the question linger seconds

“What lights?” He asked. “Come on, new hire, don’t get lost on your first day.” He held out a hand to me, and I took it, cautiously. It was a frightening moment, in a scary dark place, but his hand was warm. As we walked further from the line of light in the dark, the elevator ascended to remove that slight refuge.

“You get acclimated to the dark pretty quickly,” he said. “I had trouble with it the first few years. Closing your eyes helps it along.” I shuddered at the situation, but closed my eyes nonetheless. I trusted him blindly. He could have led me into a trap, but his voice was intriguingly soft. I wanted to wriggle out of his grip and make a run for it, but when I opened my eyes the light from the elevator was entirely gone.

“Where's the way out?” I asked.

“Quitting already?” He asked. “You haven’t even met the guys yet.” The guys? The worst thoughts stabbed my imagination. Did he do this often? Did he have a group of men waiting for a vulnerable woman he’d bring? Why would he remind me that the elevator was going down and hold the door then? Not to mention, I had my stun rod in my bag. One thing still bothered me. No lights turned on, but the room looked brighter. I could see the edges of the walls every time we turned a corner.

“The guys?” I asked. He said nothing, only pulled on my hand in a hurried pace.

“Don’t wanna be late,” he said. “Kelormantes gets upset when you arrive late.”

“Ke- Man?” I asked.

“Kelormantes,” he replied. “He’s the director.”

“That’s an interesting name,” I said. “Is he Greek?”

“Maybe at one point. I just call him K-Man. He hates it.”

“How much further?” I asked, trying to remember the amount of turns we took while patting around in my bag for the stun baton.

“Almost there,” he said. “Oh, I didn’t even ask your name.”

“Sarah,” I said. “Sarah Caspicielli”

“I’m Gavin,” he said. “They like to call me ‘intern’, but I guess that’s your name now. Maybe they’ll call me by my name now. We're here.” We walked into a more open space. The absence of light felt ever darker as the corners fell away into the unknown. Something shifted in the distance. I trained my hand over the stun baton in my bag, finger ready to zap anyone that jumped out. Out of nowhere, a large eyeball opened bright red to orange gradient in the darkness. It cast light into the void, twitching between Gavin and me. I wanted to scream from the shock of it, but the bit of brightness was welcome.

The very next thing I noticed was that the ground was littered with globs of purple goo that shivered at my every breath. The eyeball closed with a lid of darkness, and opened again with a different array of colors. The green was now next to the star-shaped pupil, and the gradient shifted into a yellow to the outside. When it blinked again, the colors didn’t shift, but the pupil was a square.

“Sarah, this is Kelormantes,” Gavin said, gesturing to the large eyeball. “K-Man, this is Sarah. She’s starting here today. Guess she’s the ‘intern’ now, right? You gonna call me by my name now?” The eyeball shifted over to me again, blinking to change colors and pupil. It was now a gradient of three colors from the middle, sky blue to white, to navy blue. The pupil was a triangle with a smaller triangle cut out from beneath. It was like an upside down V.

“Lies!” A booming voice burst out from no visible mouth. The eyeball lifted into the darkness above us, illuminating the purple postules on the ground. They shivered all jiggly, almost comically. “There is nobody new starting today. Unless… Jeromanchenikaritos! Did you forget to tell me about our new hire?!” The voice rang out in the deeper darkness, signifying walls at a certain point. I sighed with relief, then caught myself feeling relief in this impossible situation. Gavin looked at me, almost worried. The sound of slappy footsteps hurried in the darkness as a little naked man ran out into the light with his hands clasped together.

“Yes, Director?” He asked, with the most nauseatingly squeaky voice. It was no man at all, but some sort of weirdling with pencil-thin arms save for hands, and a bulbous body with four saggy chest-icles. It was almost magnetic to look at them, as they swayed loose. “I apologize, Director Kelormantes. I’ll do better. Intern! Bring Interna!” His hands parted to reveal some sort of sticky material between them. When he clasped them together, a web of the stuff exploded in every direction almost reaching me. I grimaced at the display, wondering what it was.

“You good?” Gavin asked. “Jerry’s gross, but you get used to him. It’s the others you have to worry about.”

“Others?” I asked, as we vanished into the dark again. The eyeball opened one last time with a circular pupil and pure red eye for a moment before plunging us into the deeps. With the last of the red light being cast at my feet I noticed the purple pustules part as we walked. I thought I saw a tiny skull inside one, but brushed it off as vision failed.

I held onto Gavin, my one sane piece of reality in this otherwise ridiculous and scary place. He looked over every few minutes to check on me. When we stopped, I almost yelped. It was abrupt, but as I tried to walk forward, he held me back.

“Wait for a moment,” he said. “She should be here any moment.”

“She?” I asked. “Who?”

“My girlfriend,” he said. I loosened the grip on him for a moment in surprise.

“Oh,” I said.

“Disappointed?” He asked. I couldn’t see his face exactly, but I had a strong suspicion he had one of those smug smirks on. “Yup, I’m taken. Sorry.”

“Dream on,” I fired back. “You’re too young for me. Basically a kid.”

“Here she comes,” Gavin said. “Be ready to jump.”

“To jump?” I asked, but he grabbed onto my hand and pulled us both into the darkness. The floor ended and we plunged down together for a few seconds as the emptiness parted to a bit of green light. Out of nowhere, a green sort of snake flew by glowing lightly in green. Gavin grabbed onto the squishy body and slid down the length. We flipped up and landed on the head of this definitely-not-snake. The surface was sticky and green, like some sort of mucous, but had no scent. Gavin rubbed his hand in the middle of the slime-eel’s head.

“Hey, Viv,” he said. “Got a new hire to show around today.” The eel eyes shifted in the green slime to find me, still trying to get the mucus off my hands. It sure helped hold on, even if it was the grossest feeling.

“She’s pretty,” a voice said from underneath. “Don’t get any ideas, hot-shot.”

“Wouldn’t dream of it, hon,” Gavin said. “Sarah, this is Viv, Vorgomalivorgo. Viv, this is Sarah Caspicielli.” I was curious and felt myself ask before I could stop my own words.

“You’re dating a giant slime eel?” I asked. Gavin tilted his head in confusion.

“Viv’s a Korporian, believed to be the last of her kind,” Gavin explained. “This should have been in your orientation guide. Or did you lose it?” I nodded slowly.

“I think I lost it, sorry,” I said.

“No sweat,” Gavin said, then plunged his hand into Viv’s head and rummaged around in her brain for a few seconds. I could see the brain in the green goo and the strange fish-like skeleton along the length of the slimy body. Now that I looked back, I realized we weren’t falling anymore. Instead, we were riding on the back of the slime eel which slid along some sort of a wall leaving behind the glowing goo. When Gavin’s hand yanked a book out from the brain, it made a slurping noise.

“OH! Gavin,” Viv lurched from beneath us. I still had no idea where the mouth was, but I decided to stop trying to find out. “That was nice.”

“We’ll pick it up later, babe,” he said, tossing the slimy book over to me. I caught it randomly and was glad it was sticky as my catching prowess was overstated. The title was “So you’re working in the Deeps”, but the pages were stuck together with the slime. “This is our stop. Later, Viv!” He grabbed my hand and jumped from the sticky green surface into a well of lights that I could not see until that moment. There was a circle of many different lights all pooled into a single opening. An opening that was far too small for us to fit through, which became apparent as we neared it.

“We’re not going to fit!” I shouted, but Gavin was falling in a rather cool way. One hand gripped mine, the other was on his head, holding the hood in place as wind tried to displace it. His legs were bend at different degrees, ready for an impact. He looked sure that we would not be harmed, and I had to believe in him. I closed my eyes and held on tighter in fear.

“Look,” he said as we neared the opening. “This is the coolest part.” I forced my eyes open against my mind’s better judgment, and boy, was I glad. The well of lights breathed open as we neared it, and contracted just after. Within, the light danced minuscule, yet with heavy multitudes of faintness. Each light looked tired and old, trapped within glass of many ridges to bounce it in many directions. Together, the multitude of the faint lights, created a city layered in rings down into the endless.

“What is this place?” I asked, but the rush of air removed the words to my luck. I forgot that I lied to get in here with Gavin. Part of me hoped he caught my question, and the other wanted to keep the lie going to explore this strange place.

After a few seconds of falling the seemingly endless well of faint lights, Gavin threw something to the side attached to his waist by a rope. As we fell a few more seconds, the anchor caught on what looked like a dedicated catch, swinging us closer to a level of the mostly dark space. Gavin touched down gracefully, and caught me by the waist to set down beside him. The light flickered in the glass, moving around. I approached it cautiously, trying to find an angle of clarity.

“That’s a frangellicum,” Gavin said, stepping up. “Deviously tricky to catch when they get loose. In the above world, people sometimes call them fairies, but they don’t escape too often. They are weak to glass, and don’t need to breathe. Look.” He picked up the glass orb and shook it as it got brighter for a moment. “They pretty much never die, which is perfect to use as stoplights. You’d find this topic in the guide I gave you, page twenty two.”

I opened the slimed-up book to find a representation of the well we just dove into. The glass was depicted with a cross-section to the trapped frangellicum, a truly terrifying looking creature that made light out of nothing.

“Alright, come on, new hire,” he said. “Let’s get you a placard for access. Unless…” He said and smiled smugly almost knowingly that I lied to him originally. “You want to go back up to the surface, Sarah.”

“Nope,” I said, almost shaking at the stupidity of my response. He gave me a chance to get back to my boring work, forget I ever saw any of this deeply disturbing chaos of the deep. “Lead on.” As if I could go back now. It was exciting, to a degree, and I knew Gavin would keep me safe. I hoped he would, at least.

He walked into a dark corridor where the stoplight illuminated, but no other light appeared to guide him. I had to stay right next to him since he knew where we were going. There had to be a trick to it, or maybe he was already used to the darkness since he worked there. I wanted to ask, but was sure the guide addressed this in the very beginning. I had to go for the roundabout way of asking.

“So, I haven’t really been able to sit and read the guide, so I’m going to ask,” I said. “Aside from the stoplights, is the place mostly in the dark?”

“Yup,” Gavin answered. I waited, but he did not follow up with an explanation. I wanted to know how it was that he could see, without sounding like I did not belong there. Even though I really did NOT belong there.

“So how come you can see?” I asked with a grimace of being pushed into asking directly. “Do you have like lenses that help you see in the dark or something, and can I get a pair of that?” Gavin paused, making me bump into him while walking behind in the dark.

“You don’t want what I have to help me see,” he said, and turned slightly, eyes extruded from his eye sockets like balloons, with pupils obliterated to a strange blob shape that fluctuated in shape. I gasped. Upon further inspection, the balloons were actually attached to his eye sockets, and looked almost comical. It literally looked as if he had a pair of nipple-less breasts for eyes. I stifled a laugh, but it eeked out as a titter, which only made me burst out in laughter at the name felt too perfect for the situation. Gavin looked at me motionless. “What?”

“Nothing, sorry, it’s just…” I said. “It kinda looks like you have breasts on your eyes, like silicone implants. I’m sorry.” Gavin smiled.

“I’m glad you’re in a positive mood,” he said. “Because Hevorigna is quite an upsetting sight to newcomers. She takes care of making access placards, and we’ve arrived at her lair.” I shivered at the word. Lair. Something about that did feel upsetting, but I was certain the whole place was lairs all the way down. I reached out for Gavin, but he was gone.

I was alone in the dark now, with a foreboding feeling of dread of this lair. I searched for any sound, or flicker of light in the emptiness. I turned when a snapping sound showed up behind me. It sounded like wood, maybe old bones. I believed Gavin would not leave me if he did not think I could handle myself. Just thinking back to those eye-boobs made me lose the seriousness of the situation he placed me in.

“I can’t see you yet, Hevorigna,” I said, with a smile. I looked above for a moment, as if there was a face there. “But I’m sure you’re beautiful.” At the compliment, a small fire appeared from a little spike in the distance. The light exposed a scaly hand with sharp talons. One of the talons was producing a flame which vanished shortly after.

“I’m here for an access placard?” I asked. “Is that something you can help me out with? When I get a way to see you in the dark, I’ll stop by again to compliment you again. I promise.”

“Girl knows her politics,” a voice breathed in a whisper-scream of wind. “Bring her to get a visor from Neltinolar, Gavin. Sarah, was it?”

“Y-Yes,” I said, smiling at her response. “Nice to meet you, Hev, if I may call you that.”

“Sure,” she said. A talon lit up again in the dark, this time exposing a scaly maw full of teeth growing in different directions. Some of them served no purpose at all for the jaw, only seemed to impede it, but the maw was part of a dragon-like head with five eyes, two in nostrils, two in ear holes, and one middle larger eye that had a plus-shaped pupil. “Hold still.”

“Beautiful,” I said, and found Gavin grimacing not far from me in the exposed lair. The flame partitioned off into a sort of whip, and whizzed by my face. When it was close I realized that there was no flame at all. The light was created by this orange smoke, within which surfed a ton of tiny little creatures. One was sitting on one surfboard, while a piece of plastic sat on another. As that little tiny humanoid creature circled around, he painted the card with a picture of me. When the spinning was done, the card fell at my feet. I picked it up to find another little critter stitched through the hole in the placard wriggling around. His tiny hands walked along my body, gripping onto clothes, and settled at my waist. I inspected him, but it was no longer a living creature. Only a clip remained, holding the card onto the edge of my pants.

“Page fourteen,” Gavin said, coming up in the receding light of orange. Just realizing now that the slime on the book was glowing, I could read the pages soaked in the goo while in the dark.

“Piromites,” I said. “Pieces of metal given orgon, the living flame. When applied to inanimate objects, the essence of dead flames create piromites that serve anyone who gives them orders. Orgon is created by stifling a fire in a chalice of an Igni, a colloquial dragon. So you’re an Igni, Hev?”

“That I am,” the whisper-wind replied.

“That’s cool,” I said.

“You’re not reacting at all like I expected you to,” Gavin said, coming up. “Oh well, strange girl. Next stop, some feedings. Let’s go.”

“It was a pleasure to meet you, Hev!” I said. “I’ll stop by again!” The darkness felt ever calmer knowing that the beings within could be friendly. When we got to the frangellicum light at the stop, Gavin turned to me with a serious look on his face.

“I know you don’t belong here, Sarah,” he said.

“But I do, look,” I said holding up the placard created by the piromites surfing the orgon of a new friend Hevorigna, the Igni. “I got a placard and everything.” Gavin just shook his head. “Ok, fine, yeah. I hated your smug face so I lied. Whatever. I’m here now. I think… I think I like this.” Gavin grimaced visibly.

“But you don’t belong here, Sarah,” he said.

“You clearly played it off as if I was starting here as a new hire,” I said. “So why couldn’t I just start here as a new hire?”

“You don’t understand, dummy,” Gavin said. “You don’t get paid here. You pay to be here. The Deeps isn’t a job you do to make money, or make stuff. It’s a place where you pay off what you owe, with your soul.”

“Your soul?”

“Yup.”

“But what are you paying off?”

“My own internal demons,” Gavin said.

“So this place is… hell?” I asked.

“No, that’s a bit further down,” he replied. “This is more of a purgatory.”

“That’s ridiculous.”

“But it’s true.”

“You realize how ridiculous you sound, don’t you?” I asked. “You’re obviously alive. You were walking around up top. You were in the elevator with me, and… you… looked pretty dead… Am I dead?”

“No, you’re just lost,” Gavin said. “That’s what I’m saying. You don’t belong here. You’ve done nothing to the world you live in. I, on the other hand, did many bad things to end up here.”

“I don’t believe that for a second,” I said. “You said this is purgatory, so that means you didn’t do anything so bad as to warrant going all the way down. I think you’re just hard on yourself. Come on, Gavin, lets go get a visor from Neltinolar. I want to see where you work.” Gavin grimaced.

“Fine,” he said. “But you can’t work here. If there is anything I will accomplish in the remainder of my once life, it is the fact that you will leave this place and lead your life away from the Deeps.”

“Shouldn’t it be ‘the Depths’?” I asked. Gavin did not respond, only held out a hand. His face was hidden in the hood shadow from the frangellicum light. I held out my hand only to be yanked out by a giant hand. Akin to my predicament, Gavin was also held by a large hand in the darkness. The frangellicum gave no light into the well of stops. The only thing I could see was the displacement of a big creature suspended from a silvery thread. The hands looked to be legs of whatever sort of spider had us in its grasp.

“Just go with it!” Gavin shouted over. This had to be a way to get back up higher, to a different stop of the well of the Deeps. On the other hand, falling and anchoring was a brutish way of descending. I wondered why the spider-like creature couldn’t just carry people down in the first place. I’d have to ask Gavin about it later. “The very top, please.” The spider-like creature lurched upward on the silver thread. That was definitely not how a spider’s web thing worked. Maybe this was some sort of machine operated by some creatures. I was certain the guide held the answers, but the constant motion made me afraid I’d drop it.

The reel was slow, almost unbearably so. Gavin just swung around limp in the hand holder. I had to wonder how he died before he ended up here. Was it something related to his inner demons? He was facing down the well, so I could not meet his eyes with a questioning glance. Instead, I watched the endless well of faint lights fall lower as we ascended. At the top, the frangellicum was denser, lining a sort of circular street with other orbs positioned in front of buildings. Some of the windows opened to an array of strange, from the sexual to the confusing. I shuddered.

“You ok?” Gavin asked as the hands set us down up against the cement street surface. I flipped myself over to find Gavin already standing with a hand out to help me up. I reached up and held onto a very cold hand. I had to remember that he was not human anymore, but his hands were warm before.

“The windows,” I said. He smiled and nodded once.

“Yeah,” he said. “I forgot to warn you about those. The people and creatures here get as weird as they can get. Best to just let it be, or be mixed into the weird. That’s what I do, at least. I have seen others blend into the weird effortlessly.”

“Says the guy dating a green, glowing, slime eel named Vorgomalivorgo, a Korporian,” I said, almost proud I remembered the full name and the creature name.”

“True enough,” he replied. “Did you look up Korporians in the guide, should be page 42.” I withdrew the slimy green book from my purse, realizing the green coated the inside of everything within with a slight glow. It looked like my bag had internal lighting, which wouldn’t be half bad for most bags. I opened the book to page 42 to a picture of a dragon-looking creature with a translucent body of green slime. It was like a skeleton of an eel with a human-like brain at the front, all encased in two layers of slime. The solid internal slime was like hardened jello, while the surface coated with shifting loose slime that glowed. I followed Gavin along the street lined with frangellicum reading the description aloud.

“‘Believed to exist since the Etherium, the Korporians are the liquified essences of moss mycelium that grows in damp areas of forests all over the surface. Only after thousands of years of pooling within low points of said forests, does the essence seek out a nearby living organism to invade and encase. Most often found as fish or creatures of the forest who stopped to drink at the body of water where a Korporian had been pooling.’ Oh, wow. So there could be a Korporian wolf, a wolf skeleton encased in green slime.”

“Yeah,” Gavin said. “But like I said, Viv seems to be the last one of her kind. We haven’t seen any other ones like her show up in the Deeps. Creatures like her are drawn to this place. Their glowing slime is too obvious on the surface, and here they are very useful for transport in the upper layers where there is no frangellicum.”

“Does the visor help with that?” I asked.

“Yeah, but most people just get their eyes bored,” Gavin said, and turned to me with the silicone breasts for eyes again. I burst out laughing again at how serious he looked with them on. “I see you find that entertaining, but know that with my eyes bored I can see right through anything, even your clothes. It only takes dialing them to the right size.” I covered my crotch with one hand in shock, and my chest with the other, but he put hands on his boob-eyes and squeezed them which made me burst out laughing again. It was hilarious that everyone did that to their eyes down here when it looked so comical.

“Sorry,” I said, holding out a hand in his direction. “They just look like boobs on your face, and then you squeezed them.”

“Do they really?” Gavin asked, then found a window of a building and held up a small jar of glowing green for light. “Oh. They do look like boobs on my face, with some real weird nipples. It’s ridiculous that nobody has said anything all this time. Maybe, embarrassing things hold no candle to the macabre and bizarre of the Deeps. Anyways, we’re here. Nel’s place.” I came up to him.

“Anything I need to know?” I asked. “Like, is he some sort of being I haven’t had the pleasure of meeting yet?”

“Nope,” he replied. “He’s a guy, just like me. There are a number of regular people here. Well, I say regular, but what I mean is deeply troubled.” I put a hand on his wrist. It was warm again, right after he had it in his pocket.

“I don’t think you’re that deeply troubled,” I said. I didn’t know Gavin that much, but from what I could tell, he was a normal guy. "It's hand-warmers, right? You heat your hands up for my sake."

"Guilty," he said. "I do that when I go up top so others don't worry and try to take me to the hospital. Doctor kinds are the worst."

"Or do you miss being human?" I asked. Gavin pulled his hand back with a sad expression.

All my life, I thought purgatory was a place for people who were torn between the two alternatives. Somebody who had regrets, but went through their life with a smile on their face would find themselves in this sort of place. On the other hand, people who ignored the troubles of everyday life and lived happily would only upset others who solved problems all their life while helping people. There was a degree of doubt to the idea of rewards in the afterlife. The reward would be resting after life lived, while anything else would be a spectrum of hell. Was the Deeps a spectrum of hell?

“Not to sound ungrateful for your kind thoughts,” Gavin said, about to say something that was clearly meant to be ungrateful, “But you don’t know me all that well, Sarah. No doubt I’m the villain of this encounter, and you are the bystander who apparently was really into punk rock at a certain point. Is that a Ramones tattoo on your thigh?” I gasped, and covered myself again as his bored eyes slowly shifted up from my thigh and he met my eyes with the weird looking pupil. He was silent for a moment, almost sad, then grimaced and smirked weakly.

“Don’t worry,” he said. “It’s not like any of my human parts work anymore. I can act like I am interested in the way you look, but I can’t back it up with anything. Not to mention that I’m dead, and in a relationship.” I wanted to ask his how he died, or what he did that made him think he was a bad person, but another thing interrupted the thought process.

“How does that work anyway?” I asked. “Does she like… turn humanoid or something?”

“If you mean ‘how do we have sex?’, we don’t” Gavin replied. “We spend time together, and we do one thing that’s a little naughty. She swallows me whole and passes me through her insides as if I was food. It feels amazing. Being suspended inside a translucent glowing eel, flying around the upper levels of the Deeps is one of very few joys I have left.” I smiled.

“At least it’s something,” I said. “Come on, let’s get a visor so I can see what you can.”

“It wont give you the spectrum that bored eyes allow, just enough to see down here,” he said. “As far as Neltinolar, just don’t mention anything about the living world, ok? He’s been here since the 1800s and modern technology freaks him out.”

“Got it,” I said, as he walked through the wall as if there was nothing there. I blinked, but the wall was clearly still there. When I reached out my hand, the surface phased around my arm. It was only a hologram, some sort of trick of the light. I shifted around on the surface until I found the edge of the doorway. Gavin’s hand grabbed mine and pulled through the threshold into a very paltry looking house. How exactly was a person from the 1800s supposed to be ok with making visors that feel like modern technology. I tried to remember what the 1800s looked like in parts of the world, and match the name with the country of origin while following Gavin deeper inside the dark space.

“Neeeeeel!” Gavin burst out. “You here?” A thundering of heavy footsteps emanated from deeper within. The man was heavyset, but looked happy about the fact. Gavin braced himself as two burly arms swept the air catching Gavin and me into a soft chokehold. The arms held my chest so tight that it was getting hard to breathe. I patted the arm to show him that he’s choking me, but he was lost in the embrace. With the last of my effort I swung my feet to kick Gavin, who instantly knew what I meant. He kicked off from the large man, and released me.

“Gavvy!” Neltinolar exclaimed in shock at the kick. “Not nice!”

“You were choking us, Nel,” he replied. “Sarah here is still alive.” Nel’s face changed to shock. He held up giant blobby hands in a gesture of apology.

“Heeeey,” he said, looking back to Gavin. “You not cheating on Viv, are ya?”

“No,” Gavin said. “This is Sarah. She’s new in the Deeps and needs a visor.”

“A VISOR!” Nel burst out. He thundered off down the hall as I found Gavin sigh. “I WILL BE RIGHT BACK!” The voice boomed out in the small space.

“Wow,” I said. “Nel is really…”

“Big? Chubby? Heavy?”

“I was going to say warm and friendly,” I replied. “To the point of killing someone in a hug. It’s good that you have him for a friend. He obviously cares about you and Viv a lot.”

“You think so?”

“A VISOR!” Neltinolar burst out from deep inside the house.

“No rush!” I called back. “Be careful, first and foremost!”

When he returned, Nel held up a pair of golden specs with green-purple lenses. I somehow expected a full vision visor, but knowing he was from the 1800s this was a far more likely outcome. He held out the golden specs to me, and I found them quite heavy. They looked dainty, but the lenses had definite weight to them. That was probably why the arms were curved as hooks to hold onto the ears. With them on, I felt like my neck was doing bicep curls every time I wanted to lift my head.

“So?” Gavin asked.

“So, what?” I replied. “They’re really heavy. Plus there is light in here, so I can’t-” I stopped as my eyes opened. The room was filled with some sort of shadows, or pieces of fabric, fluctuating on some sort of gentle wind. They were tatters of cloth, and even when one glided right over my skin, I could not feel the touch. I moves my right hand through the air, shifting a few of them on the way, but felt nothing even as the strands displaced. “What are these?”

“Good, so you see them now,” Gavin said. “It’s often difficult to explain them to someone when they can’t see them, so I didn’t say anything. These soul shreds are all over the Deeps. Now, cover the visor with your hands.” I followed his instructions as the floating tatters of cloth vanished. I could see through my hand, with slight outlines where my bones were inside my hand. “When looking through a living object, the shreds disappear from view. You’ll see how annoying they are later on, but overall, the visor should be pretty useful.”

“Thank you,” I said, trying to imagine what I’d see in the first room where Kelormantes was. Was he just a giant eyeball or was there a body? I’d have to go back up eventually and see. The memory of the above struck me like a thunderbolt. Carrying on the lie for sanity’s sake was exposed. I thought about the life I had in my world. It was boring in comparison to what I experienced in the past hours of traveling into various depths of a literal purgatory. “You’re too nice to be here.”

Gavin’s glee faded back to a scowl. Nel nudged him, then smacked his giant hand on his back, launching the poor soul into the suspended shards of cloth. Much to my surprise, Gavin grabbed hold of a few on the way. Now they hovered in his hands like some sort of gray flame. He said nothing, only tumbled the bundle of cloth into an orb and chucked it back to the big man. Nel put his large hand on the orb, and gave it right back with a large whip motion.

“What’s going on?” I asked. The ball of cloth bounced off Gavin, and headed for me, but he managed to yank it back and out of the building before it unwound like a flower. Just moments after, the gray flower exploded in darker strands. The darker parts of what I believed to be cloth, or souls? I had no idea. The darker strands undulated slowly in the air around the other stagnant cloths, cutting them and anything in their path. One of those dark strands headed my direction, much to my dismay, but Gavin stepped in with a frangellicum in hand. The faint light dispersed the darker strand into the gray cloth once again. “What was that?!”

“I was trying to teach Nel a lesson about hitting people,” Gavin said, “But he annoyed the soul shreds and they rebelled.”

“So what are they really?”

“Dead souls, I guess,” Gavin said. “Souls torn to shreds, right?” Gavin turned to Nel, who shrugged.

“You don’t know?” I asked. “Doesn’t say anything about them in the guide?”

“It wouldn’t,” He replied. “I wrote the guide. It was half for myself, and half to explain the stuff that happens here. I tried multiple ways to get it published out in the world of the living, but it’s too random, lacking a real story to it. It ends up being a bunch of descriptions of my experiences and stuff I learned since I got here. Turns out most people don’t want to think about there being only the gradient between purgatory and hell. They want rewards after living, and to that I’d say you’ve rewarded yourself plenty during your own life, so getting to rest would be the ultimate end. Wouldn’t you say?”

“I- I don’t know,” I stuttered, trying to think of something else. “So this place is filled to the brim with these tatters of cloth, and you just shrug and move on? Didn’t anybody study them or anything?” Gavin cocked his head in what looked like worry. He got really close to my face.

“Are you feeling ok?” He asked. “You don’t seem ok.”

“It’s ok,” I said, shaking the questioning thoughts of the shadowy strands away from my mind. “I’m ok.” I wasn’t done with questioning on the shadow strands, but I had to find someone who was smarter. I wondered if a smarter person would even end up in here, or if they would just rest like Gavin said.

“I’ll be back in a bit,” Gavin said right before he passed through the invisible doorway. I wanted to ask him where he was going, but he was already gone. I found myself alone with Neltinolar.

“So, you’ve been here a while, right?” I asked.

“Oh yeah,” he said. “Wanna see my collection?”

“Of what?”

“Hmm?”

“A collection of what?”

“I didn’t say anything,” Nel said, then looked at me quizzically. I shuddered at the conversation. I felt like my mind was slipping every second spent down here. I wanted to argue that he DID say something, but Nel was a softie until he was unintentionally brutal. Or was that intentional? If so, he was brilliant at hiding it. Once he lumbered off deeper into his house, I sat by the window in a table booth beside the corner with the slimed guidebook.

Gavin did say that he tried to convey these ideas to the people in the living world, but they weren’t catching onto them. Maybe once I had the gist of the knowledge, I could help him find his target audience. There had to be someone out there who wanted a different look at the land of the dead, even if it was offered as fantasy. I removed the visor much to the relief of my neck and ears.

There was nothing fantastical about this slime on the pages of the book, however. It wasn’t like glue exactly, or it would be if it ever dried. The constant moisture the book existed in allowed the pages to turn. I only worried about the ink, but it didn’t seem to be affecting it. The slight coat of glowing green goo, made the pages brighter and easier to read in low light that the whole environment was.

#Tea?#A voice asked, just as I opened the cover of the book. I looked up, but found no source of the voice. I scanned the room, but Nel was not anywhere near me.

“Who said that?” I asked.

#Apologies,”# the voice said. #I’m speaking directly into your mind. I will not reveal myself just yet. Would you like some tea?#

“Sure,” I said, a bit taken out of the task at hand. A saucer appeared on the desk near me as if by magic. When I looked away, the cup did the same thing. I stood up and looked around. When I sat down, the cup was full of hot water with a teabag. “Thank you, but I can’t drink that until I know who it came from.” I sat glaring at the hot cup of steaming tea.

#Very well,# the voice said. #I do apologize in advance.# I felt a shiver on the back of my neck as something glided along it no rougher than the invisible soul shreds. It was a minuscule drop in temperature and disturbance of tiny hairs on the back of my neck that set the wrong mood. When I turned, there was a blob of orange in the shape of a human being, but not exactly.

The form was humanoid, but the details were obscured by a chaotic surface. No stretch longer than an inch was smooth. It really looked as though a giant vat of marmalade suddenly decided it was going to be a human being. The humanoid form collapsed after a few seconds of shivering.

#I did warn,# it said into my mind. #The name’s Gary.#

“Hi, Gary,” I replied, trying to discern where to look. “I’m Sarah, here with Gavin. Well, here because of Gavin, but I’m actually from the surface.” The cup lifted flawlessly into the air and flew over gently wafting an aroma of dried leaves.

#That is why I thought tea would be fitting,# Gary said. #I live here with Neltinolar making visors and other knick knacks. We don’t get many guests, and I guess I was a little self-conscious of how I look to a surface-dweller.#

“You look kinda delicious,” I said, forgetting myself. “Like a large vat of marmalade come to life.” Gary bounced between vertical blob and horizontal blob. I took it to mean that he was laughing. “Are you also a Korporian?”

#Bleh, no,# he replied. #I’m quite corrosive actually. The walls and ceiling are coated with a special layer to allow me to do this.# Gary lumped up near the floor before springing up to the ceiling three meters away. At impact, his surface stuck like glue, and reeled the rest of his body up to the ceiling. From there, he crawled on the ceiling and touched down on the table, forming a humanoid again.

“Were you human at one point?” I asked.

#No, sorry,# Gary said. #I’ve always wanted to be. I just can’t change my shape too much.#

“Eh, you’re not missing much,” I said, and smiled. “Being human is overrated. Being a Korporian, an Igni, a piromite, or whatever you are, that sounds really cool.”

#Thank you for saying so,# Gary said. #But my corrosive being melts anything that comes in close contact. Being human is above that at least.# I almost wanted to hold Gary to comfort him, but realized he’d probably melt me if I ever touched him. It was a very tricky predicament.

#Thanks,# Gary said. #Sorry that I’m reading your thoughts. If you’d prefer, we could have a conversation inside your mind where I CAN be human. Some find it too invasive.#

“No, let’s do it,” I said. “How do we start?”

#Lay down and close your eyes,# Gary said. #I’ll do the rest.#

“Ok,” I said, and found a comfortable position on the couch. When I closed my eyes, I found myself in a grayish space of no discernible size. It looked endless, or maybe I was simply very small. Either way, I was alone for a few seconds before a person popped into existence. He looked pretty, and had a stylish suit on.

“Gary?” I asked.

“In the human,” he said, and smiled warmly. He came up and embraced me warmly. His hands gripped tightly around my back, with a longing to physical contact he sought. “Thanks for seeing me, even out there. I don’t get to be myself most of the time.”

“You got it, buddy,” I said, as the hug lingered. After a few minutes of it, it started feeling a bit long, so I pulled away, but his arms were still around me. “Ok, Gary, that’s enough now.” When he let go and leaned away, I found him crying.

“Are you ok?” I asked.

“There hasn’t been anyone like you down here in a while,” he replied.

“Alive?”

“Kind.”

I felt delighted at the compliment, but seeing as he could go into the minds of anyone, he could always meet some other kind person. Maybe it was just a compliment after all.

“So what sort of creature are you?” I asked, materializing the slimy green book in the mind space. “I can look you up in Gavin’s guide. I was just about to take a look outside this.” Gary looked perplexed.

“I don’t know,” he said.

“Oh, if you don’t want me to look you up, it’s ok,” I said.

“No,” he said, “I don’t know what I am. Nobody ever explained it to me.”

“Ah, I see,” I said. “I guess you’d be a Marmaladian then. You’re a spirit that was trapped in a jar of marmalade until it eventually turned corrosive from the thoughts of abandonment and confinement. When it broke, you were released upon the world to digest everything in sight, only furthering the distance of abandonment until you developed a mental dominance through absorbing things.”

“I like that,” Gary said. “A marmaladian, huh? Because I look like a vat of marmalade?” I shrugged.

“Partly, yes,” I said. “But ‘mal’ also means 'evil' in French, and 'malade' means 'sick', so you could be considered a ghoul of sorts. And that means that you were human once.”

“But he wasn’t,” Gavin said from behind me. I turned, but there was only more dark space there. I realized we were still in the mind space, and woke up to find him standing beside me with a large fish deep-throating his right arm all the way to the shoulder. The tailfin twitched every few seconds, but the rest of the body was motionless. “Gary’s not a spirit that got trapped in a jar of marmalade. He’s a Goto, one of many. He’s been tricking you. They do that.”

“A Goto?” I asked, and looked to the corrosive mass of orange sludge I thought was my friend. I looked in my slimy green book and found the description for a Goto by way of a table of contents. “Goto, a telepathic presence that plays tricks, often latching onto any physical object that will be beneficial to them. Their origin is unknown, but they are NOT human ghosts. Really, Gary?”

#Sorry, Sarah,# he replied in my mind.

“The orange goo is actually Neltinolar’s pet slime,” Gavin explained. “The corrosiveness doesn’t affect him. Meaning, let me do something about Gary.” Gavin brought out what looked like a straw and wiggled it until a whoosh of cold air passed over me from the blob of orange to the straw. “That should hold him for a few years. Gotos don’t age, meaning they are annoying all the time, but they spend most of their time all the way at the bottom of the frangellicum well since they can use them there.”

“I’m disappointed in Gary,” I said. “I thought I made a friend.”

“You shouldn’t be making friends here since you’re not staying,” he said. “I was toying around with the idea, but I can’t have this on my conscience, Sarah. You’re gonna have to go back to the surface.”

“And you’re going to erase my memories?”

“That doesn’t exist,” he said. “The amount of fine-tuning needed to erase just the recent memories from your mind is beyond any sort of technology this place has. I mean, we pretty much operate on magic shit and weird creatures. They use Viv like a bus for death’s sake. It’s a bad system, but that’s part of why this is purgatory. It wouldn’t make sense if all of it was figured out.”

“I see,” I said. “Well, I’ll miss you, whatever little that means to you. This was an interesting detour from my regular life. I’m kinda tempted to find my way down here somehow again, but I’m sure Kelormantes wouldn’t let me through this time, not to mention there's bound to be traps and stuff on the way that you helped me avoid.”

Gavin was silent, turned away from me in his black hoodie. I put a hand on his shoulder, thinking he was feeling bummed out about having to take me back to the surface, but there was a knife in his chest. Panic hit me first, but he was already dead, so I calmed myself. Next, I looked around for the source of the knife, and found the window shattered and a hooded floating figure out in the frangellicum lights of the circular street.

“Frankie,” Gavin said, took hold of the knife handle, and pulled it free without effort. “I knew this was coming. I haven’t gone to see him in a few years.”

“Years?” I asked.

“Time runs differently here, Sarah,” he said. “Best not get involved in this. I’ll deal with Frankie right now, and then we can go drop you off.” He threw the knife toward the wall where it stuck plunging half the blade inside. When I looked back at him, he wasn’t there anymore. Both of them were outside in the faint light of the circular street.

“You’ve been ignoring our rivalry, Gavin,” Frankie said, moving slowly in a circular motion as though squaring off in a boxing ring. They wore the same black hoodie with no designs. With the hoods up, they looked the same, save for the shoes. Gavin had gray-black sneakers on, but Frankie was barefoot. I wondered if there was a reason for it, but I didn’t have to wait long as the bare feet spread apart wide like a duck’s. Next, Frankie’s neck extended out of the hood much to my surprise. He was a goose.

“I told you, Frankie,” Gavin replied, as the neck undulated side to side, and the bill opened in attack formation of geese. “We’re not rivals. Stop trying to kill me. We’re both already dead.” A goose, but nothing normal. The neck that extended wasn’t feathered, nor were the proportions of a regular goose. This was some sort of gooseman, half man, half goose, and I was very entertained by this. I wondered whether the sort of creature was in the guidebook, but didn’t want to look away and miss any of the altercation.

“Ok,” Frankie replied, then wound his head back into his hoodie, and folded up his duck feet back to regular looking human feet. I was bewildered at the sudden change of mood until Frankie, the gooseman, realized he was being tricked. “Heeeeey… You almost had me, Gavin! I’m not falling for that again!”

“Falling for what?” Gavin asked. “We’re friends. Come give your friend a hug.” Gavin opened his arms and closed his eyes. Frankie looked confused for a moment there, then waddled over hesitantly. He hugged lightly as Gavin’s hands went around him to hold him closer.

“We’re friends,” Frankie said.

“Yeah, buddy,” Gavin said. “I’m glad you remembered. I’m sorry I’ve been away for a while. I’d like you to meet someone from the surface. Here.” Gavin motioned for me to come out of the building, but it took me a few minutes to figure out where the invisible entrance was on the wall facing the street.

“This is Sarah,” he said. “Sarah, this is Frankie.”

“Hi there,” I said, and held out a hand. I half-expected to see a wing come out of the hoodie sleeve, but it was a human hand. “Are you a goose, or a human? Or are you both? It’s fascinating.” Frankie threw back his hoodie to reveal a very pretty face. His auburn hair was styled and sleek, and he had not a blemish in sight. The blue eyes pierced right through me. I felt a tiny bit flabbergasted at that moment.

“He’s a Homunculi,” Gavin explained. “Page 12 in the guide, but I see you haven’t read any. I guess it’s a good thing, given you’re bound for the surface soon. Homunculi aren’t fully human, and oftentimes end up with animal DNA they can ‘activate’ when they want to. Frankie happens to be a goose. It really screws with his brain sometimes.”

“But Gavin is always there for me,” Frankie said with a smirk, which then faded to a grimace of sadness. “Not lately though.”

“Sorry about that,” Gavin said. “I have a bunch of other duties, here and on the surface. I have to do anything I can to save my soul. Once that happens, I can hang out with you, always.”

“You promise?”

“I promise.”

I smiled at their strange friendship. Gavin was well situated here. I wondered how he was when he was still alive. Maybe dying brought him the things he lacked in life. I half expected to just wake up any second to find this all has been a dream, but my imagination wasn’t as powerful to invent a whole underworld system that blended death, mythology, and fantasy. I was ever the spectator in the audience of this performance, and what a show it was.

“We should go,” Gavin said, patting Frankie on the shoulder. “I gotta get her back to the surface, and you know how difficult it is to get up there.”

“How so?” I asked.

“Far, dark, no guiding light,” Frankie said, but it did not form a cohesive sentence.

“What he means is that the distance is large,” he explained. “The space above this place is nothing but darkness, with no guiding anything. While falling, you know which way is up or down, but when ascending, it’s a different story. Imagine being able to fly, but you can’t tell which way you’re heading. There is air to tell you you’re moving, but when you’re going against the pull down or even just hovering, orienting yourself is a nightmare.”

“What about the elevator?” I asked, forgetting that we fell quite a way before Viv caught us in the darkness. “Oh, and Viv.”

“Korporians settle well, but they are terrible at ascending,” Frankie said.

“That’s why Viv is like a scheduled descent like a bus,” Gavin added. “But she does need to be brought up, most often in a bowl to prevent her from settling out against the motion. It’s possible that other Korporians aren’t around anymore because they settled down to the deepest Deeps, while we keep bringing Viv up and preventing her from settling down the well.”

“That sounds like you’re holding Vorgomalivorgo prisoner here,” I said.

“I love her,” Gavin said, “And I don’t want to see her settle down in hell. So if I have to hold her back from diving into the deepest parts of the Deeps, then I will. Not like we can do it forever, either. There will come a time when even Viv has to embrace who she is. I just hope the other Korporians are nice to her.”

“So, how DO we get back up to the surface?” I asked. Frankie and Gavin looked at each other, then nodded once at the same time. “What?”

“I guess it’s going to be the cannon,” Frankie said.

“I guess so,” Gavin seconded.

“A CANNON?!” I exclaimed. “I can’t survive being shot out of a cannon to the surface! There has to be another way.” Gavin met my eyes for a moment.

“Maybe,” he said. “But we’ll have to go see Hevorigna, and you’re going to have to convince her.” I thought back to the dragon-like qualities of the creature named Havorigna, an Igni, who created my placard with the help of pyromites. I was looking forward to it.

The descent was equally chaotic as when we went to get my placard made. I remembered the piromites, the living bits of metal after being given orgon, the stifled flame. The elements of Hevorigna’s existence sounded so cool, being a dragon. Gavin shook the frangellicum inside the orb at Hev’s grotto. The glow intensified, casting a yellow-orange hue at the stone entrance. Gavin motioned for me to go inside.

“I’ll stay out here,” he said. “Hev tolerates me, but doesn’t like me much. I once asked about why she looks so different from how dragons looked like, and she explained that the surface dwelling Igni were a ‘created’ by selective breeding and genetic manipulation. Now she thinks I don’t like how she looks like.”

“Do you?” I asked.

“I mean… the five eyes kinda puts you off, doesn’t it?” Gavin replied, shrugging. A rush of air from the opening blasted both of us toward the well. I tumbled over the edge, but Gavin caught and yanked me back up.

“I think she heard you,” I said, looking over the edge into the pits of the Deeps descending into hell.

“Sorry,” he said. “I didn’t really pad the way for you there. I hope you can convince her to give us a ride up. Unless… the cannon is still an option…?”

“It’s not,” I replied, closing my eyes to compose myself. People were such assholes to beautiful things. “Be right back.” Another blast of air exited the grotto, but I braced myself this time. When it passed, I rushed into the darkness head-first. Once the entrance light weakened, I reached for the green-purple heavy glasses that Nel made for me, but a talon approached lightly to stop me putting them on.

“Don’t,” Hevorigna said, breathing a burst of orange-glowing dust into the darkness. Her body illuminated for a moment, the various spikes glinting off the orange until it faded to darkness again.

“Why?” I asked. “You’re beautiful. I just want to see all of you. Screw what others think. Screw what they think dragons are. You’re an Igni, and I need to see you before I leave this place. Please, Hevorigna. I’m putting the visor on.” I hesitated for a moment to see if she would try to stop me again. I couldn’t argue if she really didn’t want me to see her, but I’d push as far as I could.

After a moment of no response, I neared the glasses up to my face again, and closed my eyes as they went on. I opened them slowly to a sight that would take too long to explain in full detail. I could easily write a book describing just the wings themselves. In short, the sight was awe-inspiring. Her whole body was lined with spikes and talons, growing in spiral patterns, seemingly random, but organized in fractals. The skin was almost obstructed by the spikes and pieces of metal latched onto them, an army of piromites in solid form clinging to her skin, glinting in various shiny metals.

The legs had larger spikes growing out of the elbows and knees, and looked retractable. The skin by them was loose and puffy, as if it slid apart. The whole of her body was a deep green with black spikes all over, and bits of metal glinting shiny like diamonds on her skin. The underbelly was lined with flat spikes, looking like a large maw of closed teeth. Up the neck, the spikes followed getting rougher and more randomized in fractal patterns until the three pronounced black spikes on the bottom of her chin. The spikes connected directly to a ridge of the bottom part of the beak-maw.

There was an outside hard edge, with teeth inside, that opened wide revealing a lot of very sharp equally black, but shiny, teeth. The upper beak had one black spike, followed up the snout by the large nostrils and the one larger eye in the middle, with four smaller ones positioned on the curve of the snout. The top of the head had horns, black and bursting straight behind before curving a bit upward. All throughout the way, the tiny bits of metal followed to look as if her whole body was decorated by various metals.

The wings exploded behind her, black spikes studding every web of skin with a pattern of spirals upon spirals, running “V” shapes along in loops over loops. The skeleton of the wing had spikes along it, bursting out in different directions but accented at every joint with a talon much like on every arm and leg, elbow and knee. I wanted to see her back, but she stood facing me, with wings at the ready to blast me with a powerful gust. I felt tears well in my eyes at the sight.

“You’re the most amazing being in existence,” I murmured, then grit my teeth in anger at myself for the murmur. I needed to convey my emotion with at full volume, damn my voice. “YOU”RE THE MOST AMAZING AND BEAUTIFUL BEING IN EXISTENCE, HEVORIGNA!” When I opened my eyes following the shout, the glasses fell from my face to the ground. The darkness felt hollow. I wanted to see her reaction to being shouted at with a compliment. Six talons lit in orange orgon, building it like a flame above me.

“You are too kind, Sarah,” Hev said, as the orgon danced above, dropping around her with drips like columns of flame, casting rivers around her of various piromites dancing and surfing the paths as if rapids rafting.

“Could you fly me back up to the surface?” I asked. “Gavin suggested a cannon, the dummy.” Hev’s head lowered, turning so that the spikes didn’t drag on the ground. The maw of teeth within a beak, surrounded by spikes felt so menacing. I was glad she was my friend.

“For you, anything,” she said. “Hop on.” I wasted no time climbing over spikes onto the spiraling spike pattern on top of her head. The back followed with a ridge of wild spikes possibly connected to the spine. With a single beat of her giant wings, we launched out of the entrance. I saw Gavin latch on to one of Hev’s legs as we were passing by. The frangellicum well looked different at the speed of a dragon.

The lights blended together into a wall of orbs, blurring into a strange marble pattern of light and darkness. With just a few more beats of the wings, we were above the pit of hell. Above us was a giant, unwavering darkness. I looked for anything to signify a direction to go, but Hevorigna seemed to know the way as we ascended.

“Are you ok?” I called out to Gavin from atop Hev’s head. He clung on for dear life, hood flapping around his face, but did not look afraid. He lifted a finger to point above. I looked but found nothing. Then I remembered that I had a visor now. The very second I put the glasses on I regretted it, but was also glad to see what hid in that vast and empty darkness. It was best left without a detailed description, but I did see the creatures who inhabited it, and there were many.

Above the giant opening of darkness was a sphincter of fabric, or what looked like some cloth material at least. Hevorigna did not slow down the ascent as the layer caught us like a net. Her spikes worked to tear into the layer, exposing a familiar hall of visible edges. I remembered this space from the start, with Kelormantes and Jeromanchenikaritos. I was surprised I could remember that long name, but it was somehow easy to say. I still had no idea what he was, but looked very impish.

Hevorigna set down, and lowered her head for me to disembark from her. I climbed down as Gavin stepped up next to me. I held onto Hev’s spike where she could see my hand. I did not want to let go of this world, but I had to.

“Thank you, Hevorigna,” I said. “You’re amazing and beautiful. It was a pleasure to meet you.”

“As was to meet you, Sarah,” she replied. I felt tears well in my eyes, but I turned away before anything escaped my eyes.

“Ready to go?” Gavin asked, putting a hand on my shoulder. I nodded. When I turned around, Hev was already gone. I looked down into the darkness underneath, but couldn’t see anything anymore. I wanted to put on the visor, but maybe there was no point anymore. I folded the golden arms of the spectacles and handed them over to Gavin. He nodded as he put them away into the pocket of his black hoodie. I moved to grab hold of the placard, but found it missing.

“I already got that when we were falling into Hev’s grotto,” he said. “One more thing.” I pulled out the slimy book from my bag and hesitated.

“Hold on,” I said. “Why would this even exist unless you were actually looking for a new hire? Does that mean this was the interview, and I failed?” Gavin motioned for us to walk toward the opening at the corner of the big hall where Hevorigna arrived. I followed him along, afraid that I hit the nail on the head.

“You weren’t an applicant,” he said, knocking that idea down. “But I do use the elevator to bring down real applicants. You just happened to walk in when I was coming back to the Deeps. As you may imagine, the applicants are dead, people just like me. I give them options of working out their demons. Otherwise, they end up falling all the way down the well. I was once the very person in that elevator heading down. Looking back, I was full of hate, afraid that I wasted my life.”

“How did you die?” I asked. “Or is that rude to ask?” He smirked, and pointed to a path in the coming fork in the corridor.

“Overdose,” he said. “I was trying to deal with the inner demons with the help of drugs. They helped for a short moment, but the bad thoughts always came back. When I got here, I was angry at everything, but then I met Viv. She does this thing… I shouldn’t say, but imagine being suspended in the ocean, feeling the ebb and flow of the whole body of water around you. It’s the calmest I’ve ever felt.”

“That sounds amazing,” I said. “Like meditation.”

“Even better when it’s forced, and when you can just be submerged without breathing for years. It’s something like pickling. Everyone wants to be a relaxed pickle, but the methods of getting there while alive are limited. Anyway, from that moment, I took to helping out the Deeps, running errands, feeding some beings, keeping company for some folks living on Ring Street.”

“I could do that,” I said.

“But you’re alive,” Gavin said, and stopped walking. “Don’t get lost in purgatory when you still have life ahead of you.”

“Why not?” I replied. “You said there is no up, only the Deeps. Wouldn’t I just end up here anyway?”

“That’s not how it works,” he said. “If you’ve lived a satisfying life, you blink out of existence, remembered by your loved ones. If you lived unfulfilled, you join the masses of spirits in the world latching onto the interests you liked of living people, unable to interact, but a spectator. Sometimes that spirit ends up in an elevator going down, ending up in the Deeps. From there they either fall, or live on in purgatory.

“The applicants are very specifically those of high degree of mental instability throughout their lives, but some still gravitate to passions of the living when spirited away. That means applicants are less frequent than you might think. All in all, I can’t have you giving up your life for this.”

“Sounds like a lot of excuses,” I said, looking his way in hopes he’d meet my eyes, but he never turned back to me. I sighed. “But I get it. Please don’t be upset, Gavin. Here.” I held out the slimy glowing book in the space that was not accepting any light. The walls were blacked out except for the edges. The darkness felt like an inverted sketch of ink on paper. Gavin’s hand reached out, but then receded.

“Maybe you should keep it,” he said. “It’s not like anyone from the surface is going to believe any of these things anyway. You could probably sell it as a book or something.”

“Are you sure?” I asked, holding the book out again.

“Just- just keep it, ok?” He said, and took off down a corridor at a hurried pace. I tucked the book back in my bag and followed along. “Come on!”

After what felt like just a minute of following him, we stood at two metal doors of the elevator in the building I worked. Gavin pressed the button for it, glowing the only light in the room aside from the crack of green light from inside my bag. The light from between the doors descended right after. Gavin turned away from the doors and started walking away, but I held onto his hand as he passed. It was warmed for my sake.

“I want to thank you, Gavin,” I said, and put arms around him, finding a skeleton underneath the cloth. It felt like he had no bulk at all, just skin and bones. “Oh.”

“Yeah,” he said. “I’m just skin and bones, as they say. I wasn’t in a very good place when I died, but that doesn’t matter much down here. You, on the other hand, have quite a juicy behind.” His hands wrapped around me and slid down my back to cup my butt. I shuddered and pushed off from him, and he guided the motion all the way into the elevator. I saw him smirk right before the doors closed, eyes dead cold. I reached out, but the doors were shut. The elevator lurched up, casting me off from the strange world of the Deeps, and back up to the surface.

I got out of the elevator in the lobby to find out it was nighttime. It was hard to imagine the whole of the excursion into the Deeps only took a day, or that it was real. All the proof I needed was the green glow coming from inside my bag. It looked as if I had a chunk of nuclear material radiating green energy inside. I rushed home excited to read the slimy book filled with creatures and systems in the Deeps, only to find the glow was from slime itself.

“That little bastard,” I muttered. I thought back to when Gavin guided my push into the elevator. He used the strap of my bag to guide me inside and catch me from hitting the wall inside. Even after saying that I could keep the guide, he took it back. I hurried to my desk to write down everything that happened in the fantastical excursion, checking to make sure the green glowing coating inside my bag was still there. Some parts were already gone, unrecorded in the long term memory, but I had an overview of the story. This story. Something nobody would believe happened to me anyway.