Into The Abyss

“For real. This is so dope.” Then I remembered something really important. Thing was a demon. From hell. Which I hadn’t even know was real a few hours ago. And I had been kidnapped! And I was in hell! Why did I have a dope living room in hell? “Wait! What?”

‘Yeah. This is your room. The boss put me in charge of setting it up because he didn’t know what kids like. I wasn’t even sure if I was doing it right, but from all the research I did this is the stuff that kids your age like. Boys. I mean boys your age. You know, I had no idea that boys and girls like different things. But that some boys like girl things and some girls like boy things. But that those things don’t really matter because they are a matter of gender roles which are arbitrary societal constructs…’

Thing was babbling. Full on, out of control babbling. But he sloshed slowly into the room drug me by the hand showing off everything that he’d done to arrange the room in preparation for… for me.

Now, I know that I’m just a kid. I know I don’t know what hell is supposed to be like because I’d never been there before. I also don’t really know why someone would go to, or be sent to hell. I mean, I assume bad people go to hell. Murderers, and abusers, and possibly my dad who I’ve heard my grandparents refer to as the devil for ditching out on me and mom.

But I’m a good boy!

I’m nice to other people. I don’t bully, I don’t hurt. Heck, I even don’t talk back to my mom. Was this really about that one time I fed my sweet potatoes to the dog under the dinner table so that I didn’t have to? Thinking furiously, I literally could not find any reason why I would be deemed a denizen of literal hell. Meanwhile, Thing was still proudly showing off the dope-est fun room I’d ever seen in real life and was telling me it was all mine.

Where was the trick? The trap? Right? That’s how this worked? I would be excited and happy and ask to stay willingly and then, then the torture and damnation would begin.

“What did I do?” A spiel about having to choose between the original Donkey Kong arcade game and the newer ones on smaller game consoles and then realizing that hundreds of original arcade games could be loaded on game consoles stopped at my quiet question.

‘What do you mean?’ Thing’s face-blob turned toward me and squished to the side in what I now understood as cocking his head. There had been something wrong with me for a minute because I had started feeling safe here. I’d started thinking that Thing was my friend and there was nothing wrong or weird about being in hell.

That wasn’t the only weird thing. I understood Thing. He wasn’t speaking English. Heck, it wasn’t any language I had ever heard, and it wasn’t the same language as the other denizens I’d seen and heard speak. But somehow, I understood when I shouldn’t. It was clear that hell thought I should be here even when I didn’t think I should. So…

“What did I do to deserve being punished in hell?” My eyes were burning and my nose did that instant clogging stuffed up thing it does when there’s even the slightest hint that I might cry. “Why are you pretending that this is all for me when everyone knows… knows… that… Am I dead?”

At some point I’d stopped being able to hold back my tears and I felt them trickling down my face. I didn’t want to cry. Not at all. Not in front of the demon assigned to steal me away from my mom and make up my room in hell.

‘No. No punishment.’ A mass of tentacles reached comfortingly for me but I backed away suspicious. How could I have ever been friendly with Thing? Why was I friendly with Thing? He stole me from my mom! ‘You didn’t do anything wrong. You are here because – ”

“Not another word!” A sharp voice called from the hallway.