subterranean homesick alien
"Have you been a very bad man, Ethan? Have you been a very scary man?"
~
Ethan Rayne is learning that chaos, indeed, isn't always very fun place.
Sure, there's the excitement and the never-ending surprises and the color, god, he was never going to get tired of the color. But then there's the pain, too, and all these infuriatingly dull questions.
The whole, 'have you been a bad man' one is getting repetitive. Every time, it's the same thing. Have you been loyal, have you been bad. Have you walked the right path. The torture implements hurt, and the fun and festivals and blood and guts, they can be pleasant or smell bad.
It can be amusing, Hell, but it wouldn't be Ethan's first choice.
Still. It really wasn't his choice. It was the end of the world.
~
Ethan wrapped himself up in a sheet the second night he was there. Not as practical as a gas mask, and he could still smell tar and burning flesh, but some of the smoke stayed out of his lungs.
To think he'd even miss the smell of that girly incense they used to make do with, back in the old days, for incantations. Better than burning flesh.
Mummified, and left to his own devices for a while. Exploring, yeah, he could do that-- established that early on. The restraints were a some-time-only thing. Everywhere smelled like burnt bodies. He walked through, untouched, and once and a while he saw idols of the gods he'd been cutting himself up over for years and never really believed in.
The thing about hell gods is, they don't care if you believe. Payment in kind-- they don't really believe in you.
He burned the candles and he got the tattoo, and it gave him a link to this place. That's what he figures-- no way to tell, but he is tattooed and the rest of the burning bodies weren't, and the few survivors he finds wandering around look like priests from Estonia, demon-kin, and punk goths that happened to find satanism as a form of late-night entertainment.
They were saved, trapped, red-walls and huge, hollowed-out caves, like some fucking sycophants of Dante. Not the way he wanted to spend eternity.
He could still be dying, though. There's no way to tell.
Oh, there are signs, once and a while. A stubbed toe, a craving for ribs and good Guinness. He misses football. His nerve endings work as well as they ever did. He's getting a sunburn from the open fires.
And the once-and-a-while, divine-payback kind of pain, where the world went black and he screamed for hours? Well. Hell-gods are vindictive. It's hard to appease them all.
Once and a while, the rivals find you.
~
Sometimes, the green and scaley, or grey and gooey, or red-horned demons ask him what he's doing here. He'd roll up his arm, and they'd nod to themselves, and know he was not to be put in the fires. He was a saved-one, useful enough to keep alive, possibly interesting enough to talk to.
They'd talk. Ethan would hear things-- about why things had gone to hell. Nasty rumors about the Slayer and the Key, whatever that was. Things about nightmares/chaos/wonderland/hell-on-earth and one big fucked up mistake.
Most of the time, he believed the last one, but never loud enough the others would hear it.
It was interesting, to say the least, but most of the chaos here was just a myth. Hell, it seems, is very well organized. That's why, they tell him, there are hundreds, thousands of Hells, and only one Heaven.
Bureaucracy. He snorts, each time a grinning alien face tells him that, and miss football, the untouchable-ness of old, where he burned frilly incense and chanted, and never really got what he wanted in a large-scale sense, because the gods simply didn't give a fuck.
Cynical, yes, and once and a while his patron god would punish him for that. But never very hard, because -- the god said -- he understood all too well.
~
He didn't miss beer as much, once he made friends with a demi-god who had a still set up in one of the old store-caves. It was connected to the slave-pens through miles and miles of magical, moving stairways.
Yes, he's a slave, in the technical sense. Not too happy about it, but free-er than most of the demons, and too boring to keep tabs on.
Truth be told, he's quite enjoying parts of this. There's the delicious part about being able to just sit back and watch all these facinating creatures and daily events unfold. All these magnificently chaotic times right in his lap, and he doesn't have to do a thing.
And then there's the bit where he's a physical coward, which isn't going so well.
~
'Have you been a very bad man, Ethan Rayne? Have you fed on the depths of pain and suffering as we, the Unholy, have done for eternity?'
There's another thing that's just a myth-- eternity. Even the oldest of gods can't claim that, when they're not lying.
"I've never been one for Unholy. I'm in it for what's to see."
More hot pokers, more white-hot noise. Between the ears, between his toes. His vision goes red, and Ethan howls-- it echoes around the room, of course, because he's strapped in some basement closet of Hell.
Something huge and grinning floats behind his eyes. He passes out, and is grateful.
Has Ethan Rayne been a very bad man? He can't remember, but it seems not bad enough.
~
The reason he's in Hell, that's a far more interesting story.
See, once upon a time there was a blond bint of a girl that made a Bad Man quite good, white-knight even. Some things happened, which he really doesn't want to think about, and then, the world started shimmering.
One minute, drinking a fruity, girly drink with a little umbrella that the boys in fourth form used to beat him up over liking-- the next minute, a dragon was flying around and snorting brimstone and fire.
That was the last day of Earth.
Something in these caves kept the rest of the shimmering from spilling into them. There were a few weeks where he could step from one piece of pavement to another, walk from Harrod's to Fantasyland to Candyland to-- here.
Actually, Candyland was the last thing he saw, pillars of salt and all, before something Saved him.
Sometimes, yeah, the shimmerings creep this far underground. Mostly, they're concentrated on the surface of the planet, though, where the population of useless humans are being swallowed whole by lines of destruction, lines of creation.
Whole towns, changed and rearranged. Dragons. Good god-- dragons, for chrissake.
But, the gods didn't like their cribbage games disturbed, and they have some control over chaos. Hell-gods are good that way. That's why, the vaults underground don't get as much of the chaos atmosphere as the ground up There.
But, dragons.
Ethan's a bit disappointed, truth be told.
~
'Have you done your rotas and your chants, Ethan Rayne? Have you-- punished the Unworthy and those who bring you to forget your cause? Are you on the correct path?'
Ethan bolts up, in bed, the sweat clinging. The fires of Hell are hot. The face of Ripper, crunched up and Ethan screaming, 'come on, put your BODY into it! You sound like a schoolboy at lessons!'
Closes his eyes. He remembers those casts. 'Put your power into it, Ripper, by god!' Grunts, moans.
Screaming out-- the two of them.
Names of deities that never should be proven.
Oh, yes. He remembers that, thank you very much.
The boys used to throw rocks at him in the school yard because he was smaller than them, he never did well in sports. He was picked last, and went home to a mummy who told him to grow up strong, not like those other fairies.
Fairies don't last well in hell, unless they're in bondage. Some of them go-- funny, in the head, and end up liking the leather whips and blindfolds, their wings changing shape and taking on a metallic grey instead of rainbows.
Those ones don't scream.
The rest of them -- and the humans, and the gnomes, and most of life and unlife -- scream.
Ethan remembers those bullies on the playground, and the slaps from home, and his eyes go red from watering up.
The smoke's too thick down here.
~
He walked down a tunnel almost five miles long to get here, and so now that he wants to leave, he's walking up. It's the same corridor of red earth, molten grey granite, sloping gently upwards to the surface.
So far, no one's come to stop him, despite the collar that says 'mine' and proves he's property in the strictest sense. Things are in a bit of a disarray. Whatever that was protecting Hell from the chaos upstairs, it's started to be rather less effective. Last night, while they were all sleeping, something took the main banquet hall and the vast chasm that served as one of the tertiary torture halls, and turned them into a nudist beach, complete with blond-haired, blue eyed simians.
Killing off the intelligent apes occupied some time, but then Hell realized something was amiss.
There was never supposed to be a beach. Ethan liked it.
But now that the novelty's worn off and gods are parading around talking about what To Do, Ethan's taken a logical step to an illogical problem. He's going to go see what the fuck is up. Maybe find an animal to sacrifice. Pray a little bit. See some sky, whatever color it happens to be.
Eye-searing green, maybe. There's still just rock around him yet.
Some time soon, that'll change, and the red, red earth will be under him instead of all around. Maybe then, finally, he'll get to have some Fun.