Time - Chapter 23
Screams filled my ears as my eyes fluttered open to a mix of black, orange, and red dancing along the craggy rock above me.
This is a portal fantasy series with mythological roots and action-adventure tendencies. You can search through all my work on my website.
In the ashes of her past, she will rise up, and her death will save us all.
Lizzie ran from her past for ten years, zigzagging across the United States every few months, trying to outlast the prophesy that an oracle gave to her when she was just sixteen years old.
But nobody can run from their destiny forever.
After watching her friend brutally gunned down by a group of ruthless demons, she had no choice but to protect the woman’s child, and there was only one place where Lizzie knew the girl would be safe.
Bronard, Missouri.
Home.
She stayed away to protect her parents, but the girl needed mystical protection.
Her parents had taken in magical strays their whole lives, including Lizzie. If anyone could save the poor child’s life, it would be her mother and father.
But will returning to her home doom Lizzie even as she works to save the child she has vowed to defend?
Screams filled my ears as my eyes fluttered open to a mix of black, orange, and red dancing along the craggy rock above me. My body no longer ached, and when my hands found my chest, there was no rebar sticking out of it. There were, however, hundreds of other shuffling cadavers, moaning and shambling. They filed around me like a school of fish.
There were corpses, thousands, tens of thousands, hundreds of thousands, maybe millions, queueing in a line that extended as far as the eye could see in any direction. The sea of people did not end at the horizon, either. Great towers of souls swayed high in the caverns, causing the orange and red that lit the cave to flicker against my face with great waves of shadow, the light seeking slivers of space between the wobbling masses.
Behind me was only a flat nothingness. There was nowhere to go but forward, except that was impossible, too. The throngs of people stood shoulder to shoulder, preventing any egress or ingress from the line. Crows and vulture screams cut through the air as their shadowy figures flew overhead.
I was dead, right? And somehow, I made it to the underworld. Kimberly had told me about Hell when I was a child but said nothing about how many people crowded every inch of it. There was no doubt I was in Hell, either. Heaven would not smell of charred remains or be filled with screams of suffering.
Veronica! The thought hit me like a ton of bricks. Where was she? Had she somehow lived? No, it was impossible. I had watched the light leave her eyes and felt the last gasp of her life.
“Veronica!” I screamed, trying to push through the masses of bodies. “Veronica!” I turned to the person next to me, a glassy-eyed man with a shabby beard and shabbier clothes. “Excuse me, please.” I tried to push past him, but he didn’t move. “I have to find—move!”
He looked over. “Wait your turn.”
“I’m not waiting for—Are you crazy? I have to find my friend.”
He sighed but still didn’t move. “I had a friend. Promised we would find each other in the hereafter.” He chuckled. “God, I hated that guy. If I never see him again, it would be too soon.”
“Not much of a friend, then.”
“He was the best friend I ever had,” he said as I ducked down to burrow my way past him. “If you’re gonna touch my unmentionables, at least introduce yourself. My name is Simon. Simon Albert.”
“I don’t care,” I snapped, looking for a way past him.
“That’s the problem with people these days. Don’t care about the niceties.”
It was impossible. There was no way to dig through the bodies—but if I couldn’t go through them. Maybe I could go over them.
I smirked to myself as I thought of the idea. I turned back to Simon. “I’m sorry. You’re right. The worst part of Hell is the unpleasantness of the other people.”
“Oh my,” he replied. “Do you really think we’re in Hell? I did everything right, though, and now…now…” He dropped to his knees. “Oh god, what have I done to deserve this?”
I didn’t answer. Instead, I stepped on the crook of his back, using him as a springboard to the arms of the person next to him, and then leaped forward along the shoulders and necks of the souls all around me.
“VERONICA!” I screamed as I made my way across the undulating masses. “Veronica! Where are you?”
“I’m Veronica!” I heard somebody shout out.
“My name is Veronica, too,” another echoed.
“I’m Veronica, too!” This time it was a man’s voice, and I growled because none of them sounded like my Veronica.
“I’m not talking to any of you! I’m looking for a Veronica who was killed in Prague. She’s a little girl, just six years old. Please, she’s probably alone and scared.”
A warbling female voice shouted, “I’m alone and scared!”
I was getting nowhere, but I couldn’t give up. Most of the people were packed in so tight that even through their consternation, they could not lift their arms to swat me away as I walked over them. Instead, they had to suffer my weight until I moved off of them, and then they’d give out a relieved moan.
“You should get down!” a man’s voice shouted at me.
“Shut up, Ronald!” the woman next to him snapped. “Let the demons sort it out.”
“What do you mean?” I said. “What are the demons going to sort out?”
“You think you’re the first person who tried to cut the line?” Ronald called out. “Happens all the time, and that’s when the demons circling above swoop down. Send you to the back of the line is what they do.”
I considered this. “That doesn’t sound so bad. Especially since we’re all waiting to get into Hell.”
“They rough you up,” a shrill voice added. “Leave you bloody, with your entrails hanging out, ‘til you reach the front in a million years or so. Happened to a buddy of mine.”
“It did not!” Ronald shouted back.
“Enough!” I screamed. “I’m not trying to cut the line. I’m looking for a little girl. Can you help me or no—”
“There you are,” a voice boomed.
I was scooped up by the arm and dragged into the air. “Let me go!” I kicked and screamed. “I am not trying to cut the line!”
“I know. You’re looking for Veronica.”
“Yes, I am,” I said, straining my neck to get a look at my savior. The light of the cavern blinded me. “Do you know where she is?”
“I do, but I don’t think this is the right place to discuss it. Do you mind if we go somewhere else? I really shouldn’t be here. It’s drying out my skin.”
“Where are you taking me?”
“Heaven, of course,” the voice said, and then my skin glowed a bright blue, and we vanished. When we disappeared, I could swear I tasted strawberry lip balm.
This is a portal fantasy series with mythological roots and action-adventure tendencies. You can search through all my work on my website.