JIFFY chapter 4...

Down in the Hole

Hey! So…if you are liking the story, please share with someone else who might like it. So far, I have had one agent request 50 pages, but the rest have either rejected me within 24 hours (impressive?) or ghosted me. This may be the only place you can end up reading this beast! And please comment if you feel so inclined. I love feedback.

Chapter Four

The first thing she noticed was the intense and unrelenting wind.

There was a total absence of sound, not like the roaring tornadoes she’d endured huddled in damp Ohio basements. It was silent, but it felt like it might blow her hair off her head.

Araqiel had not a hair out of place. The wind didn’t touch him. He strolled down a brick path under a canopy of violently swaying oaks and seemed to have an invisible bubble around him that deflected leaves and branches. Most of those hit Jiffy squarely in the face or glanced off an arm or leg, leaving bleeding cuts.

“So, this is where we start to get into the real meat of Hell,” he said over his shoulder, winking. “As I believe I showed you on the map, the whole arrangement is an assortment of rings. It’s interesting that rings play such a motif in human life, don’t you think? Kiss the Pope’s ring. Ring around the collar. Diamond rings, promise rings, wedding rings, three-ring circuses, ring-tailed lemurs. Lord of the Rings, my precioussssss Ring of Fire, Johnny Cash, Ring-A-Ding-Ding, Sinatra, of course.”

Jiffy focused on the back of his black-leather jacket, her arms crossed in front of her face. “Why isn’t there any sound?” She spit out a mouthful of dusty leaves.

“I have it muted. Want to hear it?” He snapped his fingers.

Twenty roaring freight trains assaulted her ears, so her hands automatically covered them, leaving her face totally available for lacerations. The sound made the wind seem stronger, so she bowed even lower, trying to be as small as possible. She ran into her guide’s elegant back.

“No touchies!” he yelped, plucking at his jacket. “Now I’ll have to have it dry cleaned.” Another snap and the dreadful sound was gone.

“Can you do anything about the wind?” Jiffy said, blinking tears away as the debris activated every allergy she ever had.

“That’s the fun part.” He giggled.

She kept her head down, eyes on that jacket, plodding along the brick path. Her arms were striped with bloody cuts and she was pretty sure she might be bald.

Jiffy felt like she’d been walking for hours, but time didn’t flow here the same way it did elsewhere. It flowed in the same way it did when you worked at a very shitty minimum wage job that required sustained periods of boredom laced with the occasional abusive customer looking for the kind of condoms your store just doesn’t carry.

“Do we have to walk wherever we’re going?” Her mouth filled with debris as she spoke.

“Are you tired?” Araqiel stopped so abruptly that she almost ran into his leather jacket again.

Jiffy almost said yes, but then realized that she wasn’t tired. Not at all.

“See? The laws that apply dirtside aren’t the same here. You’re not tired because you’re not exerting your physical body. But your brain is so used to equating physical exercise with tiredness, you just assumed. Isn’t that adorable?” He turned his head slightly so she could see his cattish eyes. “We’ve arrived at our destination, either way.”

He snapped his fingers; the wind ceased; a door appeared on the path, but it was totally unlike any other door Jiffy had seen. It was composed entirely of human bodies. Specifically, the sexual parts of human bodies — not dismembered or disgusting, just patched together seamlessly like a silicon sculpture of someone’s weirdest erotic fantasy.

She just stared at the monstrosity.

Araqiel coughed impatiently. “Well, let’s go, sweetheart.”

She gingerly approached the door. “Why…what…are there boobs on that door?”

“Americans are so hung up on reproduction and sexuality. Puritans. I knew they were going to be trouble from the get-go.”

“How do you open it?” She took another step closer and focused on a knobby, veined penis as big around as a barber pole. “Why have I seen that one before?”

“Probably a famous porn star. Some of them have freakish appendages, you know, and we all appreciate nature’s infinite variety. Regardless, just pull on the knocker.”

“The knocker being—”

“Exactly.”

Jiffy reached up, yanked the dick, and was transported inside.

Humidity smacked her like a jealous lover. What little hair she had left curled; every pore sweated. “Are we in a sauna?”

“That wouldn’t be on brand, would it?” Araqiel put an arm around her shoulder. He smelled of old leather and expensive aftershave, and, inexplicably, dog shit. “Here, take a load off.”

He shoved her onto a stone bench, smooth to the touch. Immediately her sore, worn ass welcome the heat, pretending it was a trendy hot stone massage. She thought Araqiel chuckled quietly, as if he knew what she was thinking.

“So, Ring Two,” he said, grandly gesturing to a 10-story gray stone grotto dripping with antebellum moss. Fireflies? Were those actual fireflies blinking faint green-yellow far above?

“This is kind of beautiful,” Jiffy said. Trickling streams of cool, clear water danced from granite face to oversized boulder and into a blue-green pool lit from below. A carved alabaster statue rose from the rear of the grotto — a woman with melonesque white breasts, supple arms stretched to the sky in an attitude of abject abandon. Jiffy felt aroused (and guilt-ridden) watching the water divide and flow down the slope of each glistening tit.

“I get the sense that you’re totally vibing with this Ring.” Araqiel sat next to her and gently took her hand in his. He kissed her palm, and where his lips pressed, a welt appeared.

“Ow,” Jiffy said as the welt grew and spread toward her fingers. “What did you do?”

“I want you to experience the full range of emotions here, and everywhere we visit. I’m giving you a tiny soupçon at each stop, a Whitman’s sampler, in your parlance.”

Jiffy was preoccupied with her hand; the welt was spreading. “What is happening here?”

Araqiel squinted at the sores. “Could be herpes. Possibly syphilis. Don’t lick it.”

“I wasn’t going to lick it. Why would I lick it?”

“You’d be surprised what gets licked here. Or maybe you wouldn’t be. I don’t know you well enough yet to judge.” Araqiel pulled an Old-Testament-looking shofar from thin air — this one was made of jet-black horn and twisted into impossible knots. He cleared his throat as if he were preparing to give an oratory address, then blew into the small opening of the horn.

A piercing squeal like a pig being slaughtered echoed around the stone grotto and Jiffy reflexively covered her ears, which let the welt on her palm jump to her scalp. “Jesus, this stuff burns and itches!” she yelled, trying to scratch her head without touching it.

Like a light switch being flicked on, throngs of beings appeared, stuffing every corner of the grotto like the giblets of Benjamin Franklin’s Christmas goose. “What is that smell?” Jiffy coughed.

“The rotting flesh of the lustful,” Araqiel said, smiling with satisfaction. “Reminds me of picnics back home.”

Jiffy’s welts had progressed to her face, but her eyes and nose were spared (she kind of wished they had been covered, to keep out the sights and the smells.) Butts and balls and tits and vaginas jiggled and wiggled and smooshed into her; since she hadn’t really populated any gyms in her time, she wouldn’t have known that the unique scent she inhaled against her will was a combination of yeast infections, bladder leaks, old jizz, bowling alley shoes, and the fish someone left in the microwave.

Araqiel blew on a little silver whistle. Two oxblood-red cherubs appeared, scowls perpetually etched on their cute little kissers. “This is Dingus and Dongle. They’re going to fly you around so you get a real bird’s eye view.”

“I’ve seen enough, really—” Jiffy’s words trailed off into a genuine scream of terror as the two little birdlings each grabbed a shoulder and hoisted her effortlessly into the air. Naked people writhed and moaned in every sexual position she’d ever seen or heard of, and some that seemed impossible. Thwack — a wet boob in the face. Squelch — somebody’s hairy butt flapped at her. Gross fluids seemed to comingle in the air and find her as if she were a gross-fluid magnet.

“You need to go on a diet, lady,” Dingus said.

“Don’t body shame the bitch,” Dongle said.

“You keep to your side, and I’ll keep to mine.” A sound like a very textured spitball flew behind her head, and the second cherub reacted with a squeak and a weakening of the grip of his talons.

“I’m gonna fall!” Jiffy wailed as her right side was released. Only Dingus kept a steel grip.

“You are going to get written up for that!” Dingus shrilled. “Fucking amateur.” He dodged naked bodies writhing in pleasure and agony against each other, grinding, slipping, sliding—

“Mmm…fresh,” someone whispered in her cherub-free ear.

###

The crowd had been cleared away by law enforcement (or trousered elephants), so Ellis stood at the brink of the sinkhole, wired for sound and image, a GoPro-type camera affixed to a bike helmet on his head, earbuds jammed into his hear holes. They’d replaced his torn button-down with a Boy George concert t-shirt. “I object to this shirt,” Ellis said. “I never liked Boy George.”

“There aren’t a lot of choices. It was this or Indigo Girls or a Trump 2020 shirt.” ZQ held his left arm firmly as he spoke. “I made an executive decision.”

The sinkhole yawned before him, dark and menacing. He couldn’t see the bottom. “I don’t want to go down there,” he whispered to ZQ.

“I know, honey,” the handsome man said, patting his shoulder. “It won’t be so bad. It’s not really what it looks like.”
Ellis’ face was an inch from ZQ’s. He could see the dark stubble and wanted to stroke it. “Have you been down there? How do you know it’s not what it looks like?”

“I have not.” ZQ turned to Mari, who held a video camera and was documenting the entire event. “Mari, has anyone actually been in one of these and come back out?”

Mari took her eye away from the viewfinder and frowned at him. “That question is irrelevant.”

“Not to me!” Ellis took a step toward Mari, but ZQ kept him firmly planted. “It’s really relevant to me!”

He heard Sislyak’s whiny voice in his ear. “Testing, testing…can you hear me, Subject 27?”

“Subject 27? I don’t even get to use my name? Have you guys ever watched a science fiction movie? You might as well call me red shirt!”

Sislyak cleared his throat. “Okay. Red Shirt, can you hear me?”

“Don’t call me Red Shirt! I’ll be doomed!”

“Make up your mind!” the bald man made a frustrated sound in his ear. “Is it Red Shirt or isn’t it?”

“It’s Ellis. My name is Ellis. Call me by my name.”

ZQ squeezed his arm. “I loved that song,” he whispered into Ellis’ ear.

“No, the song was Call Me By Your Name,” Ellis said, but his comment became a wail as ZQ nudged him ever so gently, sending him, with gravity’s blessing, into the abyss.

###

Held precariously aloft by one cherub, Jiffy wobbled and rotated like her grandma’s hummingbird suncatcher, except her trajectory kept changing due to the smackage of naked bodies against her.

The other red cherub caught up, grabbed her empty shoulder and she was righted. It wasn’t much better that way.

“You should be fired,” Dingus said.

“You should fuck off,” Dongle answered.

They flew her high above the mosh pit of lusty bodies to the alabaster statue. They planted her on one of the melon breasts, which was much bigger up close. She could easily sit on it without rolling off one side or the other. Streams of cool water trickled past her on either side, so she stuck her diseased palm into the water. Immediately, the welts retreated.

“Let me help you,” a whiskey-flavored feminine voice rang through her mind. The alabaster statue slowly dipped one hand into the diamond spray bouncing off the grotto rock, filled its hand with water, then poured it gently over Jiffy’s head as if she were being baptized. The welts disappeared.

Jiffy launched a tentative thought to see if the communication ran both ways. “I can hear you in my head.”

“Yes,” the husky velvet not-sound bathed her mind in gentleness.

“Who are you?” she thought at the statue.

“Who are you is a better question,” the voice replied.

Araqiel was suddenly hovering next to her, smacking the cherubs like horseflies with an oversized flyswatter. “No cheating!” he screamed violently. The soothing voice laughed in its throat, a purr more than a chuckle.

“Did you really think no one would notice?” the voice said, laughing.

Araqiel grabbed Jiffy, who desperately did not want to leave the cloud of soothing peace that the alabaster statue spread over her. The guide flew toward the top of the grotto, cleared the throng of humping bodies and the statue until they were alone in a cobweb-colored ether that obscured the scene below.

“No fraternizing,” Araqiel scolded. He snapped his fingers and Jiffy was floating, just as he was. It was a weird feeling, like going down a roller coaster slope but without the sense of speed. “You’re here on a special permit so the regular rules don’t apply to you. That’s why She thought she could fuck it all up.”

“Who’s she?” Jiffy tried to adjust herself to fit into the non-space, but she couldn’t get comfortable. Suddenly she longed for the comfort of her couch, her television, her box of chocolates. Ellis. Even her husband (ex), Paul. For a second, the gut punch of the loss of her marriage grabbed her solar plexus and wouldn’t let go. Her face felt as if it might cry, but no tears came.

Araqiel slapped her, hard, across the face. “Snap out of it. Don’t you know what’s at stake here?”

“No,” Jiffy said. “I really don’t. I kind of assumed I was dead, but it really doesn’t fit my idea of being dead at all. So, if you want to clue me in about why I’m here and what the hell is going on, maybe I can cooperate.”

“Cooperate.” Araqiel rolled the word on his tongue as if it were a novel new flavor. “Hm. Yes. That might work.” Chewing on his lower lip, he squinted, tilted his head and studied her. “Sure. Why not? I’ve never tried that.”

A sound like the chime of a cell phone emanated from his pocket. “Hold on.” He extricated a silver smart phone. “Yes?” He listened to someone talking on the other end. Jiffy wondered why he got better reception here than she did in her apartment.

While Araqiel argued with someone, Jiffy willed herself to spin a bit so she could look for the alabaster statue. Nothing but hazy cloud cover, like a Southern California June Gloom. Maybe she was in a mental hospital? That might explain the weird sensations and disjointed recollections. An accident? Maybe the fall into the sinkhole had left her in a coma, and she was on life support in some antiseptic recovery ward. Maybe this was all the product of traumatic brain injury, like football players who’d been tackled too many times.

“Certainly. When we arranged for this, you knew what the possibilities might be. And free will was your idea, not mine. You can’t renege on your contract or you’re no better than I am.” He ended the call with a satisfied smile.

“Can I just ask you—”

“No, you may not.” Araqiel grabbed her arm and looked her in the eye. “I am going to tell you what’s happening. You just listen.”

He snapped his fingers, and they were sitting in a spacious office, floor-to-ceiling windows offering a panoramic view of silver skyscrapers, wispy clouds, and the occasional bird. Araqiel had his back to her, and she was ensconced in a Herman Miller chair.

Araqiel now sported a slicked-back ponytail and a finely cut suit reminiscent of a Wall Street hedge fund manager who dabbled in trendy but irrelevant art on the side. He swiveled so he was facing her. “No doubt you have questions.”

“I do.”

“Well? What are they?” He tapped long fingers on the glass desktop.

Jiffy blinked. “I guess…where is this? Where am I? Am I dead? Am I in a coma?”

“That’s a lot of questions at once.” Araqiel stood and faced the pristine windows again, taking in the view of the unnamed city. “All of them fair questions. So, let me answer as many as I can.” He snapped his fingers and a laser pointer appeared. Something shimmered in the air next to him, not exactly something tangible, more like the waves you see from intense heat rising at a bonfire, or witch burning. But when he touched the place with the laser pointer, images appeared.

“Look here,” he said, directing the laser at the center of the shimmering panel. A 3-d avatar of herself appeared, rotating slowly like a vertical pig on a spit. She looked dumpy and ungroomed. Jiffy shrugged, telling herself that photos always add 10 pounds.

“This is you. A regular human being, nothing special.”

“Hey! I object to—”

Araqiel waved at her to be quiet. “Sure, sure, you’re all God’s creatures, he loves all the little children of the world, blah blah blah. We all know it’s bullshit. You’re basically ten dollars’ worth of chemicals stuffed into a sausage casing, electrified. With feelings. Great idea.” Sarcasm dripped from his comments.

He lasered the Jiffy avatar and it stopped turning. Thought bubbles appeared above its head. DEPRESSED, one proclaimed. NUMB, said another. SUICIDIAL. “So, you see, you had reached a critical combination of synapse-generated ‘emotions’ that left you stripped bare, at the precipice of epiphany.”

“The precipice of epiphany?” Jiffy’s forehead buzzed with an impending headache. “You mean the sinkhole?”

“Why are you all so focused on holes all the time?” Araqiel exploded angrily. “You boil everything down to the basest level, even for monkey puppets! I am constantly bewildered by— Oh, but you meant the portal, didn’t you? Sorry. Being in the lust grotto always makes me think too much like a primate.”

Jiffy glanced sneakily over her shoulder to see if there might be a door or even an air duct that she might be able to use as an escape. But then, where would she go?

Araqiel continued. “Here you are.” He pointed again to the slowly spinning avatar. “You…shall we say fell…into the portal. When a person such as yourself is on the verge of taking his or her own life and has contact with a portal (which isn’t very often), a celestial event is triggered. This mechanism, known as donum intuitu aeternitatis, or DIA for short, is… I don’t suppose you speak Latin, do you? How can I explain this so you’ll understand?”

Jiffy had stopped listening before he got to the Latin part. Her head was pounding, and her vision had started to blur. The rotating image of herself was fuzzy around the edges, and it wasn’t just the unflattering purple mohair sweater she was wearing on the screen.

“I honestly think I’m in a coma or something. This is all just something my mind has concocted to keep me occupied while my brain decides if it’s coming back or not.”

Araqiel stared at her, frowned, and then burst into thunderous laughter. Tears sprouted from his silver eyes. He dabbed them with a snow-white handkerchief he pulled from his breast pocket. “You all never cease to amaze. Kudos. I will give Her credit — she has an infinite imagination.”

“Not sure what you’re saying, but I do know that I must be unconscious.”

“You’re not, not in the way you think you are.” Araqiel wiped the floating Jiffy away with a swipe of his elegant hand. “Let’s start over. This is so hard, I do apologize. I’ve only had to do it one other time, and it was with Einstein, and he was much smarter than you are. Quick on the uptake.”

“Sorry I’m not as a smart as Albert Einstein,” Jiffy muttered.

“Not your fault, my dear, not your fault.” Araqiel rubbed his forehead, wracking his brain for some way to explain all of this to the woman who obviously had a limited capacity to understand. “Alright. What do you do with your free time?”

“I watch the news. I read. Watch movies.”

“Hm. So, is that, would you say, escapist? Trying to escape from your reality?”

“Escape? I don’t know. I like to know what’s happening in the world, so I watch the news. I guess reading, movies, TV…maybe those are escape. I just like stories. Stories are my life.”

Araqiel’s face lit up (because a literal lightbulb appeared over his head and popped to life with an intense amber glow) and he said “Aha! My Jove, I think I’ve got it!”

“Could I just go home? And is Ellis alright?”

“Home? Oh, not yet, dear. You’ve not even begun.” He paced the length of the windows, tapping on his folded arms. “Yes. Stories. You are all stories in the end, yes? Isn’t that what you say to each other?
“Only if you’re a big Doctor Who fan,” she said.

Araqiel snapped and again they were transported to a different locale. This time, it was night, and they were sitting in camp chairs around a crackling fire. Sparks rose into the night sky; stars winked above them. The glow of the flames highlighted Araqiel’s angular face, giving him the sinister air of a ghost-story-telling camp counselor who intended to murder all the teens in the janky cabin.

“This is better for storytelling.” He produced a very long stick upon which was skewered the fattest marshmallow Jiffy had ever seen. He roasted it over the fire, and when he turned it, it had eyes and a mouth, grimacing in pain as the exterior of the gooey treat browned and crackled.

“Help me,” the marshmallow squeaked as the flames licked at it.

“Too late!” Araqiel pulled the stick from the fire, plucked the screaming treat off and popped it into his mouth, chewing with sadistic pleasure.

Jiffy was still convinced she was dead or in a coma. None of this made any sense, from Anderson Cooper’s elevator to the tortured marshmallow. There really could be no other explanation, right? Only her own twisted mind could concoct scenarios where one minute, random naked people are fucking and the next she’s playing Girl Scout with the devil, watching it torture snack food that most likely wasn’t even really food. Marshmallows had always been suspect.

Araqiel sat up suddenly, rigid and offended. “I am certainly not ‘the devil’, I’ll have you know.”

“Can you read my mind? I guess that makes sense since I’ve created you out of nothing.” Jiffy gazed into the fire. “Maybe I should have been a writer.”

“You aren’t introspective enough to be a writer.” Araqiel put his elbows on his knees, rested his head on his hands, and smiled. “You’re just like the millionth shopper person who walks in at the right time on the right day.”

“But instead of balloons and free cookies I get this?”

“This is so much more than balloons and cookies. This is a peek behind the curtain. A look at the inner workings.”

“Inner workings? Of what?” Jiffy shifted uncomfortably in the camp chair.

“Of the universe. How the sausage gets made, so to speak.” Araqiel flicked a finger and generated more firefly sparks from the flames, watched them twirl and twist toward the midnight darkness. “You are one of very few humans throughout the history of your race who are privileged to see the Truth.”