A Short Stay in Hell (9 page)

“You maggot! Do you know against whom you
fight? Dog! You fight against God! Against God. You …” He could not
finish; he let out a scream of rage, folded his arms to his side,
and dove straight at me, head first. I tried to flap out of the
way, but whereas he seemed to be a guided missile, I was completely
out of control. Our heads collided like two hollow melons.

When I awoke, it took me a long time to find
him. I tried to look around, but I was still not in control, so I
used his trick and spread out my arms, and found I was stabilizing.
With my perfect recollection of the past, I thought of pictures I
had seen of skydivers and tried to mimic the impression I had of
their falls. After an hour or so I was doing quite well and could
even control my direction.

Dire Dan, I finally noticed, was about three
hundred yards below me. It made me sick to think when we hit the
bottom I would have to deal with him there, but it also occurred to
me Rachel would be there too. So would others who had been forced
to jump because of this evil man’s gangs. I figured when we hit I
would have lots of allies.

My enemy was trying hard to spread himself
out and slow his fall. He was heavy in build – more muscular than I
– and apparently with less friction he had fallen a little faster.
He would occasionally look at me and scream things I could not
hear, but I too had learned to slow down. Through the day I started
feeling pretty hungry and thirsty. We flew down, and I watched as
my nemesis slowly drifted further and further away. I kept angling
my arms so I was flying away from him, and we seemed to be drifting
in different directions. It was a strange feeling, falling for so
long. The wind roared in my ears, but there was a peace to it, a
relaxing sense of freedom I’d never known before. I was enjoying
it, I had to admit. Enjoying it immensely. New experiences in Hell
were few and far between, and I was having a ball. Once I hit
bottom, I planned to climb back up with Rachel and jump again.
Floors flew by at an astonishing rate. I could see people
occasionally stop and stare at me. Some looked on in pity, others
in amusement, some with the expression that plagued those in Hell:
boredom. I was surprised to see so many people, because I knew I
had been falling a long time. Did the travelers of ’52 make it this
far down? How far to the bottom?

Just before the lights went out, I caught my
last glimpse of Dire Dan. He was just a pinprick far, far below me,
and we were separated by a great distance. As complete darkness
gathered around me, I had a strange feeling of safety. I stayed
awake for hours, but just before dawn, that inevitable moment
through which no one in Hell has ever been able to stay awake, that
strange hour when books are returned, the dead revived, and all
wounds healed – I fell asleep and did not wake until the turning on
of the lights.

Dire Dan was gone. I was never to see him
again. Nor has anyone I have ever met since. He, like me, is lost
in the library. Alone. I wonder, does he still feel he is the fist
of God?

I was getting very thirsty. I was hungry too,
but the thirst was the worst. Throughout the day I passed hundreds
of drinking fountains and kiosks and could do nothing but watch
them fly by. My mouth was parched and my tongue felt thick in my
mouth. I tried to take my mind off things by practicing my flying.
I found that by pulling my arms inside my smock and bowing them out
under the fabric I could get pretty good control of my direction. I
learned to increase or decrease my speed and get some measure of
navigation, but the downward motion dominated everything I did, and
even when I was getting some horizontal movement, I was still
hurtling downward at an amazing rate. I remembered that in air,
there was a limit to how fast you could fall because of friction. I
recalled with my perfect memory that it was at around 120 miles per
hour.

As the day came to a close, my thirst was
unbearable. All my bones were aching. I fell asleep and dreamed of
drinking. But no matter how much I drank in the dreams, the water
did not seem to slake my thirst. My throat continued to ache, so I
would try to drink more, but nothing would change. I woke up many
times in the night so thirsty that was all I wanted. Why would God
have structured this Hell such that every wound would be instantly
healed in the morning, but only the kiosk would slake hunger and
thirst?

The next three days were a blur. My tongue
was swollen in my mouth, and all my bones ached. I thought I heard
people offering me water. At one point I thought Rachel was falling
beside me carrying a large pitcher of orange juice, which she was
trying to pass to me, but every time I reached for it she would
drift out of reach. Sleeping, dreaming, awake all became confused.
I could no longer see clearly, and everything was a blur. Finally I
must have died of thirst, because I woke one morning feeling great.
I was not thirsty. I could have used breakfast, but was no hungrier
than I usually was in the morning. It felt wonderful after so many
days of misery and discomfort.

Still falling. Still flying past floors with
occasional people, but they were getting sparser. Sometimes many
floors would pass before I would see another group. How far down
was the bottom? Shouldn’t I have reached it by now?

I did not want to go through another cycle of
dying of thirst. I decided to try to get back into the stacks.
First I moved near the wall, putting my hands into my smock, and
tried to slow myself by pushing my hands against the wall. It
didn’t work. I only seemed to push myself away from the wall.

I realized I was just going to have to
superman onto the floor, which would require some pretty good
horizontal speed because I would have to move horizontally into the
eight-foot space between the railing and the ceiling of the floor
above. So I had to move about two feet across during an eight-foot
drop. I was moving way too fast for that, and even with my smock
bowed into a wing framed by my arms I wasn’t getting that much
horizontal direction. But I had to try, I knew, otherwise I would
never learn how.

I stretched and angled myself to try a glide.
I was not doing too badly; I was flying right next to the railing,
but was still falling too fast to get into that eight-foot span. I
kicked out my leg nearest the railing and managed to get it inside.
It hit the railing with such force that it felt like my leg had
been ripped off, and sent me spinning. My leg was broken, and my
femur had been torn from my hip. The tumbling did not help the
pain. I had never been in that much pain in my life either on earth
or in Hell. I went into shock and mercifully passed out. When I
woke up later that afternoon, the pain was unbearable. I had to do
something, so I maneuvered over to the railing and stuck my head
out, hitting the railing as it flew past.

The next morning I felt fine. All was healed,
but I was still falling. I decided I would try again. I maneuvered
myself next to the railing and tried to get as much of a horizontal
vector as I could. This time I had a better plan. I kicked my leg
out as before, and it hit and broke again, but as I spun around, I
tried to throw my arms around the railing on the next floor down.
Though it felt like they too were torn from the sockets, I swung my
legs around and into the space between that floor and the one
below. I got them both in and was going slowly enough that I
actually hung from the railing by my knees like a child on a monkey
bar for a moment or two. But I was not inside the floor, and with
two broken arms and a broken leg, I dropped again into my fall. I
did not have to wait long, though, before I banged my head on the
railing to forget the pain.

I tried the same thing again the next day,
and almost got inside. If my back had not broken, I might have
managed to land. The following day, by improving my horizontal
direction and slowing myself down by using my arm and leg on the
wall, I finally did it. I landed on the floor. I had broken both
legs, both arms, and mercifully my neck. But lying there, with
feeling only in my head, I could see I was on a floor. I had
stopped falling. I would have danced if I had been able to feel my
legs.

I passed out but woke up late in the
afternoon and found a man staring at me. I could tell I was lying
in a pool of blood and must have looked a sight with my arms and
legs lying twisted and broken in a heap. I could not speak, but I
moved my jaw.

He looked at me, clearly wondering what had
happened. Then he asked kindly, “Were you beat up?”

I could answer nothing. He saw my struggles
and squatted beside me. “Blink twice for no and once for yes.”

I blinked once.

He scratched his head and said to himself,
“How did he get into this mess? Did you do it to yourself?” he
asked.

I hesitated, not sure how to answer, but
blinked twice and then blinked once.

“Sort of?” he asked.

I blinked once.

I was starting to lose consciousness again,
and he noticed I was starting to drift.

“Would you like me to kill you?” he asked
hurriedly before I slipped away.

I managed a weak smile and blinked once.

I woke up in a bed! I just stared at the
ceiling and enjoyed the feeling of cozy security it gave me not to
be falling. I was alone in the room and wondered where the man I
had met yesterday had gone. I jumped out of bed and made for the
kiosk. I had eggs, bacon, ham, pancakes, and a carafe of orange
juice. It was marvelous. While I ate, I did not think of anything
but the food and the sweet feel of liquid running down my throat.
It had been so long since I’d had a chance to just sit and think.
The Direites had killed me so frequently since my capture I’d
forgotten what it was like to sit down to a meal and simply enjoy
the pleasures of eating. After breakfast I looked around. I could
not see a soul. The place was still and silent. I wondered how far
I had traveled down. Miles and miles it must have been, but there
was no way to know. I looked over the edge and was saddened to
think I was going to have to continue my fall soon. I had to strike
out for the bottom again to find Rachel. I knew she would be
waiting for me at the other end of this horrible fall, and I had to
find her. Still, I was not cheered at the prospect of falling
again. It had been so hard to escape from the freefall that the
thought of returning was unnerving.

I idled around the rest of the day, opening a
few books and tossing them over the side. They were all gibberish
of course, but I kept going through the motions of hunting. After a
nap and a late lunch, I was startled to see a man approaching. When
he got closer, I could see it was the man who had put me out of my
misery yesterday.

“Hello,” I called as he neared. “Thank you
for helping me yesterday.”

He shrugged. “I expect you’d do the same for
me.”

“Of course,” I said and invited him to sit
down by the kiosk. He was carrying a pillowcase with a book in it.
He sat it carefully beside him and sat down with a sigh. He looked
at me with a sidelong glance. “You’re a long way from anyone else.
Are you searching for the first floor too?”

I nodded vaguely. “Sort of, but I’m taking a
break.” I learned he had been traveling downstairs for years. It
had been over three weeks since he had met anyone.

“In fact,” he said, “I continued on after I
had moved you to the bed, but started back this morning after
thinking about your condition. What happened to you? I was afraid
there might be some of those strange violent gangs about.”

When I explained about my escape, fall, and
attempt to get on the shelf stacks he was doubly amazed.

“I’ve often thought about making the jump to
find the bottom. But I suppose I was never sure enough there was a
bottom – you know, there always were those who said there was
none.”

He had never heard of the Direites, which I
was glad to learn. Their influence had been so profound in my area
of the library I was afraid it had spread everywhere. As I
explained their views, he shook his head in wonder and sadness.

“So you’re from way up there. You fell for
what, seven, maybe ten days. At over a hundred twenty miles an
hour. You’ve really covered some distance. I’m envious. That’s over
thirty thousand miles. Wow, and the top floor is higher than that.
Who would have guessed?”

I smiled. “I thought I would have hit the
bottom before this, too.”

As was the custom in Hell, we exchanged
accounts of our lives on earth, our adventures in Hell, and such
stories as passed the time with others in this endless afterlife.
At dinner he introduced me to a delicious Korean dish, made of
sliced beef, dumplings, and a ginger sauce. This was a dish I would
have to remind myself of on occasion.

“What book have you found?” I asked.

He smiled and pulled it out. “I found it on
the seven thousand three hundred twenty-second floor down from
prime,” he said, which meant nothing to me as his prime was clearly
not mine. He opened the book to a page he had marked with a napkin
and handed it to me. I was stunned. It read,

Breath, comes to me in bursts of joy. Stones
retched out bloody worms, worn red with the passing of licking
patterns of salt. Why signal wu8&xxKJOPOlns;kkk;

I’d never read anything of such profound
clarity in the library before. Tears rolled down my face, and I
looked up at him in gratitude.

“Wonderful isn’t it?” he said.

“It’s two sentences that are grammatically
correct! They make sense. This is the most amazing thing I’ve ever
seen. It’s poetry.” I was wild with joy. I hugged the book and
kissed its cover and passed it reverently, if somewhat reluctantly,
back to him.

“Thank you,” I said. “You’ve given me some
hope I haven’t had in a long time.”