Chapter Thirty
Thirty
When tying someone up, there are certain knots that prevent escape. One is the constrictor knot. It’s simple but nearly impossible to untie once tightened. The only option is to cut the rope, so unless your prisoner has access to something sharp, they’re not going anywhere.
Another is the Palomar knot, primarily used in fishing. Tension only makes this knot stronger. The harder your prisoner struggles, the tighter the knot becomes.
Though a little more complex, there’s always the figure eight follow-through, as long as the load strand is on the outside of the knot. There’s also the monkey’s paw, a complicated knot illegal in Canada and most of Eastern Europe.
But the one knot you absolutely do (k)not want to use, because it can easily be undone with light pressure and a slight bending motion, is a loose two half hitches knot.
Which is the knot Poppy used to tie my wrists.
I shrug easily out of the rope and start winding it into a monkey’s paw.
I’m not alone in the cell. There are at least three others that I can see.
All look to have died relatively recently, dressed in clothing that matches trends from the last few years.
None of them have the decayed feel of the souls we passed on our descent, so I gather this is some sort of holding cell for newer souls before they’re…
processed? Sent somewhere else? Given a welcome packet?
“What are you in for?” I ask one of the souls, a man with a five-o’clock shadow and bags beneath his eyes.
He doesn’t acknowledge me, just floats past, then snakes his arm between the bars, wailing as his bicep brushes against one of the bones.
Something like a current runs through him.
His entire metaphysical body trembles, but he doesn’t pull away from the bars until a demon in its Grim Reaper form appears in front of him and knocks him down with the butt of his scythe.
Seriously, unfathomable magic, and it’s here playing prison guard.
The man hits the floor, moaning. The demon hovers for a moment before drifting back into the shadows.
“Idiot,” someone scoffs behind me.
I turn to find a teenage girl slouched against the wall. She looks several years younger than me and has the most unimpressed expression I’ve ever seen. Let’s see if we can get some info out of her, shall we?
I saunter over and take a seat next to her. She eyes me skeptically. I might not have gone to school like a normal kid, but even I can tell she does not think I’m cool.
“So…how’d you die?” I ask in a Chicago accent, because why not?
“Car accident,” she says aggressively, like she wants me to contradict her.
I twist my mouth in a sardonic grin. “That’s so embarrassing for you. That’s, like, what? The leading cause of death for people under eighteen?”
“So? How did you die?” she asks, scowling.
I let out a heavy sigh, fingers still working on the monkey’s paw. “Someone was trying to lift a piano into a tenth-floor apartment, but the rope broke.”
She crosses her arms. “You were crushed by a falling piano?”
I grin. “Actually, I dove out of the way just in time but unfortunately fell down an open manhole.”
She continues to scowl.
“Rode the sewer system until it spit me out in the ocean a mile offshore. I’m not a great swimmer, but a passing cruise ship threw me a life preserver. Unfortunately, it was snatched away at the last minute by a bald eagle in an Uncle Sam costume.”
I lean back against the cave wall and cross my legs.
“I was immediately swallowed by a humpback whale that then spit me out onto a dock where a carnival had set up a fireworks display that was scheduled to go off any minute. Well, you can guess what happened after that.”
The girl’s eyes narrow.
I shrug. “Choked on a breath mint.” I offer her my hand. “Rube Goldberg. How’s hell treating you?”
She doesn’t take my hand, just glowers, and says, “Heather.”
“Ah,” I say. “Conan Gray wishes he were you.”
“What do you want?” Heather asks.
“What can you tell me about this place?” I wave my finger at the bars and the darkness beyond. “What can I expect from eternal damnation?”
She sighs, but I know I’ve got her. Now she gets to show off how much she knows and how little I do.
“Don’t touch the bars, obviously.” She nods contemptuously at the man still writhing on the floor. “Bill still does it whenever a new prisoner shows up, like he wants people to feel sorry for him or something.”
I scoff. “What an asshole. I mean, we’re all Dead, right?”
“The Grim Reaper dudes only show up if there’s a fight or something,” she says, the first, tiniest hint of fear entering her voice.
“They’re, like, the prison guards?” I ask.
“Kinda? I guess? But they’re not the only ones. There are some, like, people too. They’re the mean ones.” She shoots me a look like she’s going to quiz me on this later. “Sometimes they come for someone, take them somewhere.”
“And let me guess. They never come back?”
She shrugs. “Sometimes. Or sometimes they come back like Joey there.”
She points to a middle-aged man who has the same look as some of the souls we passed on our descent. A dying candle, flickering in its attempt to remain burning.
“It’s weird, isn’t it?” Heather asks, her voice struggling to remain firm. “I thought…Well, I just didn’t know I’d end up here.”
I can’t tell if she means here as in dead or here as in Tartarus, though I guess either one is shocking.
But honestly, not too shocking. I mean, if you asked some normie in the Beforedeath what hell was like, this is the exact aesthetic they would describe, right?
Pit of fire, wailing souls, et cetera, et cetera.
So, my question is: Do the physics here play by the same rules as the rest of the Afterlife?
Does it look like this because it’s what people expect of hell? Or is humanity’s concept of hell based on this place? That may seem like a chicken-and-egg question, but if Tartarus is like this because its residents expect it to be so, I may be able to shape the world around me.
I finally finish the monkey’s paw and place it in my pocket, then crack my metaphysical knuckles. It’s time to get to work.