JIFFY continues...

Chapter 3 of my new novel.

Just a quick status update…I’m sending out queries for my novel to literary agents. I got a response that requested the first 50 pages! If you have a literary agent and you think they would like this book, let me know. Comments are welcome, as always.

Chapter Three

The glare of light outside the tavern was blinding. Jiffy covered her eyes, still feeling the powerful flush of the drink chasing itself through her bloodstream, and blindly careened into Araqiel’s sea-green velvet coat, which smelled of her grandfather’s special blend of pipe tobacco.

He pushed her gently away. “Now, now, pull yourself together, Jiffy.”

She inhaled sharply, and really had a good look at him. Silver skin, waistcoat cut in the Regency style, ivory lace cuffs, black suede breeches terminating in black buckled shoes like the pilgrims wore. A large emerald stone set in silver caught the light on his right index finger (was it a finger?) “What are you?”

Araqiel snapped his long fingers and a mahogany walking stick crowned with a silver demon’s head appeared. He tossed it up, caught it, and said “Ta-da!”

“That doesn’t answer my question.” An unmistakable nauseous panic started to rise into her throat, and she felt suddenly faint.

“That is quite enough of that, young lady.” Araqiel waved a hand over her, and the nausea passed immediately. “I guess you’d call me your tour guide, in a sense.”

“My brain is scrambled, isn’t it?” Jiffy blinked and took a step back. “Something happened…did I get hit by a car? Did that stupid homeless man slip me some kind of hallucinogenic drug?”

“You shouldn’t generalize about the homeless,” Araqiel said as he studied pointed, manicured nails. “Some of them are quite erudite. And they do not all use drugs. That’s the trouble with you people. I can’t understand how the L.A. made you so dense, and without any type of telepathic abilities. Just sloppy craftsmanship.”

“I am not from Los Angeles, if that’s your point.” She turned a looked toward the horizon. “Is that Anderson Cooper elevator somewhere? Can I get back to where I started?”

“L.A., as in Lord Above. That’s another thing. You all think everything is about you and your ridiculous planet and your congested rat-hole cities. Again, telepathy would’ve really made a difference. You’d have a greater understanding, as a species.”

“So, you’re not human?”

Araqiel’s face contorted into a pained, disgusted squint. “No need to insult me. Do I look even remotely human to you?”

“Your clothes,” Jiffy muttered.

“Oh, these old things? I only put these on to make you feel more at ease.” Araqiel snapped his fingers, and the Regency attire was replaced with tight black jeans, a leather jacket, sunglasses, and an Iggy Pop t-shirt. “Better?”

“See, that’s what I mean. I have to be unconscious or—compromised. You aren’t real. You’re in my mind.”

Araqiel arched his eyebrows (were they eyebrows?), tilted his head slightly, and made the face that pissed-off wives make when their husbands tell them they should lose some weight. “You think a lot of yourself, don’t you?”

“I really don’t.”

“Do you know where you are? Why you’re here?” Araqiel suddenly had a lit cigarette in his hand, and he blew a puff of blue smoke at Jiffy.

“At least in my world we’ve banned public smoking,” she said, coughing and waving the offensive swirls away from her face. “I’d think you could do it here. Wherever this is.”

Two overstuffed red armchairs appeared, and Jiffy was seated in one while Araqiel puffed from the other. “I think you need an adjustment,” he said, gesturing with the glowing end of the cig. “You’re still thinking like you’re above ground, but you’re not.”

“So, I am dead.”

Araqiel growled, frustrated. “You people! It’s always life or death with you, black and white. There is so much gray area. Look.” He leaned forward, palms resting on his knees. “You are not dead, but you are in what you’d call the—waiting room of death.” He snapped his fingers and produced a vintage Penthouse magazine. “Care for some reading material?”

Jiffy knew she’d gone crazy. No wonder, with her husband leaving for the Indian Cinderella, and all the bad news, and Ellis god-knows-where groping some random stranger—

“You are not crazy, either. You’re just traveling.” Araqiel vanished the magazine with the flick of a wrist, and produced an antique scroll tied with scarlet ribbon. When he pulled the satin bow, the scroll rolled out past his biker boots, and laid flat at Jiffy’s feet. “This is a map, of sorts. I can’t give it to you, but I can show you what it is you’re doing here.”

She studied the parchment, but little black dots kept moving all over it, like gnats on a rotted piece of fruit. “That map has fleas.”

“Those are just the souls who are housed in the various rings of Hell, so we know that everyone is present and accounted for. Sort of a GPS, in your parlance.”

“Various rings of Hell? Like, capital ‘H’ Hell?!” Jiffy leaned over to look more closely at the map, and indeed, the tiny dots did look vaguely like people. Little sparks of fire ignited here and there, and she heard teeny tiny screams. “But you said I’m not dead.”

“No, but you are incredibly stupid,” Araqiel said, snapping the map into the ether. “You’re going on a tour, and I am your tour guide.”

“I’m going on a tour? Of Hell?”

“As it were.”

The red velvet chair, soft and familiar, vanished and Jiffy landed on her ass in the dusty dirt. Araqiel stood before her.

Jiffy said, “I’d like to go home. I mean, I need to go home.”

Araqiel laughed. “I’m sure you would. It may be a while, sweetie. Enjoy the view.”

Jiffy felt panic rise in her chest. “What I’m saying is, this is all fascinating and probably a hallucination, right, but I’d like to wake up now, or leave, or go back to my normal life.”

Araqiel tapped his long nails on the desk. “But you were trying to end your life, weren’t you?”

Feeling called out, Jiffy felt her face go red. “No. You mean suicide? No. I’d never do that.”

The demon thing laughed. “But you did. You jumped willingly into that big, bad hole. Most people who do that either end up rescued, resuscitated, and rehabbed, or they end up dead. But here you are. Betwixt and between, as it were. The only way out is through.”

“I know you have incredible powers. You can just snap your fingers and put me back where I was.” Jiffy was bluffing but figured it might be worth a try.

“Incredible powers, check. Snapping fingers to put you right back into your miserable earthly plane, not so much. Even we have rules. So…” He sighed and stretched luxuriously. “You’re here until you get to the center of the Tootsie pop.”

“Can you just say what you mean instead of using candy metaphors?”

Araqiel’s pleasant face clouded and turned menacing. He leaned forward. “You want it spelled out for you? Fine. You’re here until you finish your tour. If by that time you’ve learned a lesson, the lesson, you may choose to go back, but not before. Clear enough?”

Jiffy glumly nodded. The pain was just beginning. “What’s the lesson?”

“That’s for me to know and for you to find out,” Araqiel said with a wicked grin.

The Zachary Quinto clone cop led Ellis to a nearby unmarked black van reminiscent of Liam Neeson movies.

“Am I going to be interrogated?” Ellis tried not to sound delighted.

“We just need some information,” ZQ said, opening the metal doors at the rear of the vehicle. Inside, a command center worthy of any respectable, low-budget spy thriller oozed tension. An older bald man with Harry Potter glasses and a thin gray mustache punched buttons at a console as a younger, darker woman, thin as a rail, prayed to a statue of what looked like a green elephant. With pants.

ZQ looked behind them to make sure no one followed, then hurried Ellis into the van and shut the doors.

The dim light and close quarters caused Ellis to blink rapidly to adjust. ZQ gently pushed him into a cushy office chair next to the elephant. “Tell us what you know.”

“What is the sinkhole?” The thin woman whirled, angry brown eyes wide with panic. “Why did she jump?”

“As I’ve said, she didn’t jump. We’d just bought rum. What is with the elephant?”

ZQ put his hand up to stop the woman in mid-slap as she tried to assault Ellis. “He doesn’t know, Mari, please control your temper.”

Mari replied, “This is Ganesha, a Hindu god.”

“Why is he in an unmarked police van?”

The bald man turned and removed the headphones. His pale gray mustache moved as he talked. “We use all methods at our disposal.”

“Methods for what, exactly?” Ellis stared up into ZQ’s cavernous nostrils. He fantasized about being sniffed aggressively.

Mari knelt uncomfortably close to the cushy chair and stared directly into Ellis’s eyes, her hands on his knees. “Sir, we are doing no less than plumbing the depths of the spiritual universe.”

“Plumbing? You think the sewer system collapsed or something?” Ellis continued to try and focus on ZQ’s sexy nose holes, but the woman was still there, intensely kneeling.

“Concentrate. Why did your friend end up in the sinkhole? Did she know what was down there?”

“Why? What’s down there? I mean, other than the sewer and dirt.”

Mari inhaled deeply, closed her eyes, and tried to gather her composure as Ganesha looked on, unperturbed. In whispered, measured tones she replied “Listen. Forget what you know.”

Ganesha coughed. “I’m sure that won’t be too hard.” His voice had the calming, baritone quality of old British cinema stars.

Ellis jumped at the sounds of the pachyderm’s voice. “Holy fuck. That elephant sounds like Peter O’Toole. From Lawrence of Arabia?”

“No editorial comments necessary.” ZQ frowned at the elephant. “We’re trying to get information.”

Ellis leaned into the back of the comfy chair, trying to put inches between himself and Mari. “I don’t know anything, really,” he said with a nervous laugh. “We just came down here to see the sinkhole. Something different. I never expected her to fall in. I think it was an accident.”

“There are no accidents, no coincidences,” Mari hissed, backing off with arms folded. She pointed an accusing finger at ZQ. “You brought him in. You need to get some information.”

“I could sit on him,” Ganesha offered as he started to shift his massive weight.

“Not necessary!” Ellis shouted. “I am absolutely willing to cooperate. I just don’t know what you want to know.”

The man with the dull grey mustache turned in his chair and cleared his throat in that way moms do when they’re tired of everyone else making a mess of things when they’ve known the answer all along. “Isn’t it obvious?” he said, shaking his head.

“Apparently not.” Mari swept her dark hair from her face and shot the gray-mustache man a withering look. “But please, Mr. Sislyak, enlighten us.”

Sislyak pushed his round glasses up and studied Ellis. “He’s working for the other side. Trickery is their stock in trade.”

“I’m not working for anybody!” Ellis exclaimed. “You can look at my bank account if you don’t believe me. I’m a wage slave at a marijuana dispensary.”

“I knew drugs were involved somehow,” Mari muttered.

“Ha! You owe me ten bucks,” Ganesha said. She sneered at him.

ZQ’s handsome face was suddenly inches from Ellis’ lips. “Look, friend. These people don’t care about you, but I do. I want you to get out of here and go on with your regular life. But we need some information, and we need it now.”

“Jesus, if I knew anything I would tell you.” Ellis said, sweat beads forming on his forehead. “I want to know what happened to Jiffy as much as you do.”

Sislyak slapped his hands together and uttered a high-pitched yelp. “I’ve got it! Genius!” He rummaged in a large black trunk and extricated a complex apparatus festooned with wires and electrode leads. “We wire him for sound and video and send him in after her.”

“I’m not going down that hole,” Ellis said, trying to get up. ZQ sat in his lap to keep him there, which temporarily froze the reasoning part of Ellis’ brain.

Sislyak was on him in a second, ripping Ellis’ shirt apart and fixing pads and wires to his hairless chest. “Hold still!”

ZQ dodged the wires but stayed put. “Can we just send him down there? He’s a civilian!”

“Stand him up,” the bald man commanded.

“Don’t I get a say in this?” Ellis squirmed as they wrapped the apparatus around him.

Ganesha snorted and waved his massive trunk. “Does anyone get a say in anything that happens? Wake up, meat balloon.”