Kurt headed up the bank, crossing the grass and coming to the edge of what seemed to be a town... a giant, ring-shaped town. The grass cut off at a crisp line and a packed dirt road stretched forward from it, wooden sidewalks bordering the road on both sides as it ran off into the distance.

Kurt hadn't looked at the grass much on the other side of the bank, but as he was about to leave it, he noticed that it was all a uniform length, like a golf course or a park. He wouldn't have been surprised if this was some genetic or magical property of the grass, yet he couldn't help thinking that there might be a mythical figure like Charon, a counterpart to the ferryman, but who spent eternity on a riding mower.

The buildings on the main street were short, all single-story, and behind them ramshackle houses stretched as far as Kurt could see; shoddily constructed wood-plank buildings with flat roofs and almost no space between them. The main street seemed nice enough. The buildings along it were crafted with more care, the wood cleanly carpentered and cut in uniform slats, the corners of the buildings sharp. And people walked along the street, just like any other town, oblivious to his presence at their border.

Kurt walked over to the edge of one of the sidewalks and stepped onto it. The only time anyone seemed to walk in the street was to cross it and he didn't want to attract undue attention. The people ahead of him looked alive for all intents and purposes. A pallor tinged red from the ever-present flames gave them a pinkish color, almost as if they were blushing. Their clothing ranged from loincloths, to togas, to high-necked Victorian garb, to even an Armani suit, but all of it was drab, all of it lacking the vibrancy of colors in the living world. It was whatever they wore to their funerals, he guessed; the clothes of the dead.

He was wearing a pale golden orange shirt that his mother bought him because she said it would go great with a light colored blue jean. Compared to the dull colors, it stood out like a flashing light. Even though it had to be over 80 degrees, he untied his jacket from around his waist and put it on, zipping it up to the neck to hide his shirt.

He kept his head down as he walked, glancing sideways into the windows of the buildings he passed. There was no glass in the windows, though it probably didn't matter in a place where there were no bugs and the weather probably didn't vary much. There was a library, a barber shop, a yoga studio, a storefront revival church, and a room where a group of people were playing Simon Says. The other storefronts contained a couple of tables and chairs each. One had card games going on, while people played board games in another, and a few rooms were unused.

Ten buildings up, the sidewalk cut off as he passed through an intersection only eight feet wide, giving him a chance to look down the narrow street into the mass of shacks, the term "shanty town" coming to mind. While the construction of the various shacks seemed haphazard, he could see streets crossing the one he looked down. The disorderly squats were apparently built upon an orderly grid. "Curioser and curioser," he mumbled to himself.

Stepping up onto the other side of the intersection, he heard a voice shouting. It was female, young, and as he strained to hear what she was saying he realized it was one word being repeated over and over again. "Alive!"

Looking up from his feet he saw the girl, perhaps fifteen, another block down, pointing at him. "Alive! Alive," she shouted. Other people on the street began to notice, each pausing in their strolls or shopping to look where she was pointing, and as they noticed him, they began to approach.

Kurt twirled around. Behind him people came out of the buildings. A group was forming and closing in around him. He backed off the walkway and down the sidestreet as the people began to fill up the bottleneck between the buildings. They didn't seem particularly angry or excited, more curious than anything. Still, he was getting a serious zombie movie vibe he could not ignore. As the crowd grew bigger and closer, the urge to flee became more intense.

It didn't take long for the urge to become an imperative. Kurt turned and ran, the shouts of "Alive! Alive!" following behind him.

People came out of the doors of the shacks in front of him, clogging his path. Spotting another narrow intersection up ahead, Kurt slowed and whipped to his left around the corner, speeding up again as he got onto the straight road. More people had joined in the cry. "Alive! Alive!" voices called. Kurt sped around the next corner, turning right this time.

His heart pounded in his chest and the sweat ran down from his brow, but the sounds of the following mob were dwindling behind him. He turned at random, trying to make his trail hard to follow. Though his lungs burned from the running, he forced himself to pound onward, eventually slowing to a jog and then a brisk walk when his feet began to feel like they were made of lead and his shins sent a lance of pain up his legs with each step. Moving randomly through the warren of shacks, he put more distance between himself and the mob, and when he couldn't even hear a faint whisper of their voices he finally allowed himself to stop.

There was no sidewalk on these dirt streets, but the house to his left had couple of feet of paving stones running along the front. Kurt sat down on the stones, slipping off his backpack before leaning his back against the wall of the shack with a thud, panting. He set the backpack down and unzipped his jacket, tearing it off, then unbuttoned his shirt almost to the waist. He gripped the lapels of his shirt and flapped it, forcing air to circulate around his sweat-drenched torso.

He wanted to throw up, could feel the bile rising in his throat, but held it down. Slowly he opened the backpack and pulled out his bottle of water, doing his best not to guzzle from it for fear that too much too fast would just all come back up.

After a while he settled down, his breathing slowing to nearly normal. He'd drunk about half of the water. He closed bottle and put it back in his pack. He had an urge to get out another cigarette, but after that run he decided against it. He needed his lungs as clear as possible in case he had to run again.

Kurt jumped to his feet as he heard a door open behind him, the backpack held by its strap in his hand, ready to be swung. The man that stood in the doorway was older, around his fifties or so, with a short beard and long curly hair, a tunic covering his body. Kurt stared at him, contemplating whether or not to run. The man stared back.

"You're alive," the man said, looking from Kurt's eyes to his sneakers and then back again. His posture loosened and he laughed a chuckling laugh as if relieved. "You're alive."

"Yeah," Kurt said warily, still ready to run at the first signs of trouble, his hand tightening on the strap of the backpack.

The man looked down the street in both directions and then waved Kurt toward him. "Come in," the man said. "We must get you out of the street before anyone else sees you."

Kurt stepped forward tentatively, trying to explore the man's eyes. He didn't know what he'd find, though. In living people the eyes were the window to the soul. By all reasoning, this man was a soul, so what his eyes became a window to Kurt could only imagine. He seemed genuine enough, though. Kurt walked in quickly, letting the man shut the door behind them.

The house was small. The main room in which Kurt stood was perhaps ten by ten feet, curtains covering a doorway on the side. In the center sat a rough table of boards and posts with some similarly constructed chairs. "My name is Corynysus," the man said behind him.

Kurt turned, shouldering his pack. "Kurt Gray," he said, extending a hand. He'd done it out of reflex, but before he could withdraw it Corynysus had taken it in a firm grip. He was solid. Kurt didn't know what he'd expected. He'd never given that much thought to the manifestation of souls in Hell, but all the literature had portrayed them as spectres, insubstantial wraiths. Corynysus, though, had substance, even mass. But it was lifeless mass. The hand, though solid, didn't seem to have bones, at least none Kurt could feel. It was more like rubber, somewhat hardened, or a stiff clay. The best possible comparison would be shaking the hand of a mannequin... and having it shake back.

"It is a pleasure to meet you, Kurtgray," Corynysus said, pronouncing Kurt's name all as one word. "I have been here so long that life was becoming like an old dream I was not sure I had ever dreamed. It is wonderful to be reminded that it really happened."

Corynysus was smiling broadly, his face lighting up so much that it was hard to reconcile the smile with the man's state and where he was. "Lyatea," Corynysus called, "come out and meet our guest, Kurtgray... from the world."

From behind the curtain a woman came out. She was short, slightly under five feet, but Corynysus was no giant either. Maybe it was just them, maybe the time they lived. Kurt recalled having read somewhere that the human race, due to better nutrition overall, was getting taller as the years passed. Corynysus turned, smiling proudly, to beckon Lyatea over to meet Kurt. She came to stand next to Corynysus and he put an arm around her, beaming proudly at Kurt.

"This is my wife, Lyatea," Corynysus said. "We were married 25 years during life, but I passed before she did. When she passed she spent two years seeking me out in this maze. A better wife and greater love no man could seek in life or death."

Kurt's hand twitched forward before falling to rest at his side. He bowed rather than feel her hand in his. It wasn't that it disgusted him in a nauseating sense, it just gave him what could best be called the heebie-jeebies. "Thank you for having me in your home."

Corynysus waved Kurt to a chair and bid him to sit. Once Kurt did, Corynysus sat too, Lyatea standing behind Corynysus's chair. "Are you comfortable?"

"Yes, thank you," Kurt said. "If it wouldn't be too much of an imposition, though, would you have any water?"

Corynysus frowned deeply and Kurt feared he'd been too presumptuous. "I'm sorry," Kurt apologized. "I didn't mean to..."

Corynysus looked down and raised a hand. "No, no, no. There is no need to apologize." Corynysus raised his head and there was a genuine expression of sadness on it. "It is my shame not to be able to offer you, my guest, the full hospitality of my home. But I would be a worse host if I did. The food of this world is not for persons still of yours."

Kurt's eyes widened. "Is it poison," he asked, thinking of what might have happened if he'd had a drink from the Acheron, remembering suddenly that the rivers in the underworld were even dangerous to the touch.

"If it was only that," Corynysus said. "A man may enter Hades' realm, but if he eats its food or drinks its waters, he may never leave."

Kurt shuddered at this revelation. All the edible food and drinkable water he knew of in this whole damned place were in his backpack. And that was lunch, not provisions for what might be a long stay. "Holy shit," Kurt said. "Pardon my French." He should have remembered the tale of Persephone from mythology class. He looked Corynysus in the eye. "You've been a great host. You saved me from making what could have been a terrible mistake."

Corynysus smiled and Lyatea behind him beamed, apparently proud of the compliment Kurt had paid to her husband. "Perhaps we can trade stories," Corynysus suggested. "It would be a way of showing friendship and I must admit that I am very curious about how you came here."

Corynysus began the exchange, claiming it would be rude to let himself satisfy his curiosity first. He was a sandal maker from Athens. How long ago he'd lived he could not remember, but it seemed to Kurt that it was before the rise of the Romans. All in all it was a bland and boring tale. Corynysus acknowledged that he had lived an uneventful life, and he believed that was the reason why he'd come to this place. He had not been hero enough to go to the Elysian Fields and rest in glory, nor had he been wicked enough to be punished. Instead he lived out a meager existence much like he had in the world. At the appropriate points in the story, Lyatea would nod to confirm something Corynysus said. She never spoke.

Kurt in turn related an abridged tale of how he'd arrived, leaving out the details of how he'd first struck out with Jennifer at the club and how he'd been a bit zonked when Robe Guy knocked him through the portal.

They talked longer, Kurt telling Corynysus about "The World," about technological advances and world politics, though it turned out Corynysus had heard much of it from new arrivals. When Kurt started yawning, though... He tried to control it, but it was hard to hide.

"You are tired," Corynysus said. "We have a bed in the other room."

Corynysus stood and Kurt followed him through the other curtain, grabbing his backpack off the corner of the chair where he'd hung it. The bedroom was smaller than the main room, containing little more than the bed, a small table, and a window that looked onto the wall of another shack less than a foot away. "It is not much," Corynysus said, waving his hand at the bed, "but it is all I can offer."

Kurt extended his hand and Corynysus shook it. "I really appreciate your generosity," Kurt said, smiling, the odd feel of Corynysus' hand in his not quite the disturbing shock it had been before.

Corynysus smiled in return. "Thank you. May you sleep peacefully and wake restored."

"Thank you," Kurt said. He watched as Corynysus left the room and let the curtain fall closed behind him. The bed was small and the mattress thin, but it didn't matter. He set his backpack on the floor, took off his boots, lay down, and was asleep within seconds.

---

Kurt hadn't checked his watch before he fell asleep, but he was sure he'd slept at least ten hours. Waking slowly, he stretched his arms and legs, glad for having had the opportunity to rest. He'd been so fatigued the night before.

"Good morning," a voice said.

Kurt recognized the voice only vaguely. It was as if it had been in a dream of his, one which didn't bring back pleasant sensations. He'd dreamed of going to Hell, he remembered. Dreamed of being chased and ancient Greeks living in a shack. "Good morning," he replied in kind, turning on his side as he opened his eyes to look at the owner of the voice.

Seated in a chair not three feet from his bed was Robe Guy. "Sleep well," he asked, his voice patronizing, saccharine sweet. He'd lost the robe, and now looked like someone out of a Levis Dockers commercial, a pair of slightly wrinkled khakis and dark blue, cotton shirt covering his muscular frame.

"Shit," was all Kurt could say.

"Glad to see you too," Robe Guy said, standing. "You weren't easy to find. I had to sniff around this slum for hours."

Kurt sat up, slowly so as not to make any wrong moves, and swung his legs over the side of the bed. "Sorry to put you to so much trouble," he said, rubbing his eyes. "Next time I'll leave a trail of bread crumbs." As soon as he said it, he knew it was snide, but the fear was gone. What could the guy do to Kurt that was worse than the situation he was in now?

"You're a prince," Robe Guy said. "Clean yourself up, put on your shoes. You've got ten minutes. There's a piss pot in the corner if you need it." He turned to leave and in the back of his shirt Kurt could see a hole with a small bloodstain around it where the knife had gone in... and come out.

Kurt waited until the guy was out of the room to use the bucket. Shaking off and zipping up he scanned the room, trying to find an escape route. The window was 6 inches from the next shack. Kurt would be lucky to be able to squeeze between them sideways. He sat down on the bed and quickly put on his boots, then he opened his pack and pulled out the sandwich and the bottle of water.

Not being sure how long he'd be in Hell, he needed to conserve his food. He ate half the sandwich, enough to kill the growling in his stomach, and he drank just enough water to wash it down without being too greedy. It left about a cup and a half in the bottle, which wouldn't last him very long. The human body needed three or four times that much liquid every day. He'd die of dehydration before he'd die of hunger, and then what? Would his soul go wherever it was supposed to go or would it be trapped in Hell? Was Hell the place it was supposed to go? Would he chicken out as death approached and drink the local water?

He quickly put his stuff back in his pack and threw it over his shoulder. He'd have to go along for now, but escape would be on his mind, both from his current situation and from Hell itself. Kurt had meant to ask Corynysus if he knew a way out, but in the course of their chat he'd forgotten and now it didn't look like there'd be a chance. He was going to have to hope his captor knew the way out and was headed in that direction.

Robe Guy sat at the table as Kurt came through the curtain, Corynysus and Lyatea cowering by the door. "Ready to go," he asked, standing.

Kurt nodded, then turned to Corynysus. "Sorry," he said with a genuinely sad expression. He wasn't sure, but he thought that Corynysus nodded to him, giving him absolution. At least he hoped that Corynysus could forgive him for leading this intruder to his home.

Robe Guy walked to the door and opened it, waving Kurt out. Stopping in the street, Kurt watched as he leapt at Corynysus and Lyatea. He heard them both scream and then Robe Guy walked out of the shack past Kurt, laughing. Kurt stepped back and looked at the old Greek couple. They were on their knees and Corynysus was cradling Lyatea as she wept. Kurt sighed in relief, glad that they hadn't been hurt, but there was little time for the emotion as Robe Guy grabbed Kurt's shirt and yanked him forward. "Come on," he said. "We've got places to go."

Robe Guy released Kurt when it became apparent that Kurt would follow without protest, leading him to the main street. They walked along it, following it toward the center of the cavern. If one of the souls noticed that Kurt was alive, they didn't make a big deal of it this time, crossing the street to avoid the vampire, who would snarl at anyone even remotely in their way.

Other than the snarling, they walked in silence for hours, keeping a moderate pace. Kurt looked around, trying to find an escape route, but each block was like the next, each intersection leading into a warren of shacks. The light never changed, the flames in the center of the cavern's roof a constant and unwavering source. And eventually, in the distance, an end to the main street appeared. It wasn't another meadow. It was a straight drop-off, a cliff leading out into space.

Kurt's feet hurt, as did his shins. His boots were made for walking, but still the miles they covered were more than his unconditioned city-living body was prepared for. He was sure his feet were blistered and he wanted to sit down and rest a moment, but Robe Guy seemed unwavering in his purpose. "You ever been here before," Kurt asked, breaking the long silence, the cliff looming a few hundred yards away.

"Once," Robe Guy said, "years ago, during the war. But I didn't get to see the sights."

"So how do you know where you're going?"

"I've got my sources," he snapped. "All roads lead to Pandaemonium. We just follow them toward the center until we reach it."

"What's Pandaemonium," Kurt asked.

"Shut up."

Kurt did as he was told, walking silently, until they reached the end of the road. The last building, the sidewalk, the street all ended mere inches from the edge. A thin sliver of dirt and rock separated them from the open space. At the edge, Kurt could see down into the center. It was somewhat like Dante had described; concentric circles leading down, though Kurt could only really see the next, the rest blocked from his sight by patches of clouds and the pure distance. The next one down seemed to be at least a mile below, the tops of what appeared to be skyscrapers looking like pinpoints on a map, and he couldn't locate a stairway or elevator or ladder leading down.

"What's your name, kid," Robe Guy asked.

"Kurt. What's yours?"

"Vinnie. Ummm... Kurt?"

"Yeah?"

"Have a nice trip." Vinnie shoved Kurt over the edge, shouting "Geronimo!" as he jumped off moments later.