I'm going to Hell. Again.
I hate going to Hell. It's like walking into a ninth grade classroom with your fly undone. But I am bidden, so I go. Such is my life.
Still, I don't have to go yet. I've got the morning to procrastinate and pretend my life doesn't exist. I decide to see what Cobb is up to.
Ten rings. I must have got him out of bed. Typical.
"Guh"
"Cobb, you miserable fucker. WAKE UP!"
"GAH!"
"It's Jase."
"No shit"
"You wanna get some breakfast?"
"Breakfast?"
"Pancakes. My treat."
"Pancakes"
"The IHOP near your place? Ten?"
"Mmmmm...better make it ten thirty"
He's still late of course. Why the hell am I the only person in this universe who is punctual? And when he gets there, he still looks like shit - threadbare Cure T-shirt, dirty thongs, his fucked up black hair shoved into a baseball cap and fighting back with all its strength. But then Cobb always looks like shit. It's his thing. And it balances me out nicely, with my white suit and leather shoes. It's always good to be the good looking one.
"Sleep well?" I ask, mockingly.
"Mmm"
"You want your usual?"
"Mmm"
I grab a waitress and order. After that, I decide to cut to the chase. "I gotta go to Hell today"
He looks up. "You know, I warned you about those roleplaying games�"
I smile. "Seriously. Got the order this morning"
"Ah."
"Information needed. They reckon it's straightforward, but - you know"
"Yeah"
"Wanna come along?" I ask hopefully.
He raises an eyebrow.
"Come on. Moral support. Besides, what the hell have you got to do instead?"
"Well, I was gonna go to the comic store, gotta pick up-"
"Your comics can wait, boyo. Besides, the same thing always happens. Some
demons kill some people, Constantine says fuck a lot, and then he saves the day."
He gives me a withering look.
"Fine. We can get your comics first, then go to Hell"
Sometimes, I can be a right bastard.
We take my car, because Cobb doesn't drive. He flicks through his comics, then tosses them on the back seat and stares out the passenger window morosely. Finally, as we come off the turnpike, he speaks.
"Saved a kid last night" he says, casually.
"Yeah? Saved as in -"
"Nah, just his life. But, well, you know"
"Yup. Junkie? Gang?"
"No, he was drowning, actually. Threw himself off the bridge."
"Shit, eh? Did he tell you why?"
"Ah, adolescent bullshit - nothing to do, world full of hate, blah blah blah. I lent him some comics."
I nodded, impressed. Cobb never lends people his comics. "Yup, that should help. I haven't been up to much myself. Been doing applause work on the net, but that's too easy. Guess that's why they called me."
"Huh. Applause work. Don't you hate lying like that?"
"Nah. Besides, you don't have to lie, you just be supportive of the good stuff."
He raises that eyebrow again.
"Hey, there is SOME good stuff, in there somewhere. You've just got to get yourself away from the subject matter." I laugh. "Found one last night - a web page devoted to Macgyver fan fiction."
"You're kidding me"
"I swear. Only two writers, but�"
"Shit!" he laughs with me. I tell him all about one of the most stupid stories, where Macgyver and his arch-enemy Murdoch are wrestling in a river and eventually have gay sex. That one, I didn't actually applaud. That would have been just too much bullshit. I just kept my comments general, just enough to keep them writing, and hopefully encourage them to write their own stuff. It's a small thing, but then, that's exactly what we do.
We have a good run, and pretty soon we hit the city. There won't be any parks at the building or anywhere near it, of course. They enjoy that. So we park on the outskirts and walk.
We're all well aware of how amusingly cliche it is to have an entrance to Hell in the centre of New York City. Fact is, it's simple business sense. We deal with humans, and there are more humans in New York than anywhere else. Of course, the real genius was making it a real building and filling it with staff so that it can actually handle most things with a minium of transference. Rather than take one soul at a time, they put your request on file and take the day's quote out in one big block. Best of all, it's a bureaucratic nightmare that can infest any company that needs to interact with it. It's like two Hells for the price of one.
We come in through the sliding doors. Naturally, the air conditioning is freezing cold. Sitting behind the front desk is a woman with impossibly fabulous breasts all-but bursting out of her low cut, suspiciously nurse-like uniform. Everything about her screams "your secretary is also like me. You just have to take control". Thankfully, we know what to expect, so we can cut this short.
"Excuse me, miss. Don't bother with the flirting, we're here on business. Special orders." I hand her the paper. Out of habit, she absent-mindedly fondles my fingers as she takes it.
"Interview, I see. Please proceed down there to door five"
I stare at her.
"What?" she says, innocently batting her eyelashes.
"Do we really have to do this?"
She smiles, lustily. "I can think of other things to do�" she purrs.
"And cut that out too. I mean this Kafka crap. Save it for the punters."
"Well, you never know�" she begins.
"Please. Like I'd convert for a whore like you."
"Well, fuck you too."
"Point is, we know the drill and we really aren't in the fucking mood."
She grins far too maliciously. "Like I said, pretty boy. Door Five. "
Did I mention I hate going to Hell?
After the second hour, I'm ready to start killing people. Of course, that's exactly what they want. Once you get mad, they have you by the balls. That's why I bought Cobb along. The guy's so damn dull he can keep me calm even in here. He also knows how to keep my ego in check, which is another thing you need in this place. You start thinking you're hot stuff and you'll want to spend more time here, kicking in heads, and that's a very bad idea indeed.
Finally, sometime in the afternoon, after I've been up and down more than thirty levels of stairs, filled in twenty two different forms, in triplicate, visited fifteen wrong offices and departments, talked to two dozen surly clerks and made fourteen angry phone calls, and when it's exactly too late to get a good lunch deal anywhere within ten blocks, even if I run flat out, and when my parking fee has just jumped ten extra dollars, they process my request. Of course, they won't be able to deliver until the final transference, so we'll just have to wait and be patient, please sir, they're moving as fast as they can. Cobb goes out to get us some noodles so I don't lose my place in line. That's another reason I brought Cobb - the man can find good Chinese food anywhere in the city. Exactly how a semi-goth comic fanboy from Jersey does that I've never quite figured out. Some things in life you just have to take on faith.
And so we wait. I manage to name all fifty states, all the Plantaganet kings of England and about half the episodes of original Star Trek, which I'm pretty proud of. I read Cobb's comics twenty times each and we play through every two player card game we can think of. They wait until my car is being towed, and when the TV has finally stopped showing infomercials and the only episode of Get Smart that I haven't seen has just come on, they finally give me clearance to the interview room.
You see, Hell is actually a lot like prison, in that, the people in there often know a lot of stuff about the people who should be in there. I've been sent to get some information from a condemned soul regarding an Earth operation. I don't know all the details, of course. In some ways, though, that makes my job easier. I just hurt him until he answers the questions.
You might be thinking that it would be hard to hurt someone who is spending eternity being tortured in Hell, but it's simple really. I have something they don't: hope. And the more intense I make that hope, the more awful is their despair. It usually only takes a few minutes before they sing like canaries. The real trick, of course, is getting Hell to grant access. That takes some favours and string pulling, but that's my boss's department. I'm just the delivery boy.
So. I turn on the hope, he fills in the blanks, it should all be simple, in and out. Then fill out five million forms in triplicate and I can be out of here in time for dinner. Just two days of my life wasted. I can handle that.
But nothing is ever as simple as you think it will be. My mistake this time was that I hadn't even glanced at the name of the guy I was here for. I had no idea who it was till I walked in the door. After all, they're all just the same to me. It's just a job. But if I had looked at it, if I'd read the damn name on the sheet, I would have know this was probably something a bit bigger than a two day trip to New York. Something I really didn't ever want to get mixed up in.
Just in case, I double check my sheet, and there it is, clear as day:
"Kennedy, John Francis"