48 Whateverthefuck

Lily

Lily stalked through the Universal Hall, noting the expressions of those around her. Most—no, not most, all —of the Afterlife denizens looked troubled, like they sensed the same nebulous, unknown bad thing that she did. Only some of the souls looked the same. Odd.

The Hall wasn’t busy either, though it hadn’t been as busy for a while. Given the baseline of wariness that had become common, most people preferred to stay within the relative safety of their realms.

And here I am, going for coffee.

Common Grounds came into sight, the usual line out the door nowhere to be seen, though people still went inside.

A sudden flood of sticky foulness crawled down her spine, stopping her dead in her tracks.

“What the fuck ,” she murmured, allowing instinct to take over, turning to scan the Hallway. A few others looked similarly disturbed. Maybe it was some kind of magic—

A wailing roar, like a chorus of terrified babies in pain, layered with something wet , like shredding meat but with volume behind it, echoed down the Hall, freezing everyone in place.

Bad. Wrong. Not supposed to be here. Wrong wrong wrong wrong—

Trust me, you’ll know when something doesn’t belong in this Universe. Bel’s warning came rushing back to her.

“CLEAR THE HALL!” Lily bellowed at the same time as several other denizens.

Everyone burst into motion, a few screams and panicked calls adding to the chaotic thunder of feet and the horrible roaring that, Lily realized with horror as she launched into a sprint, was getting closer. People poured out of Common Grounds at the same time people started to run into it, only to be shoved back by the fleeing baristas.

“We’re a fucking coffee shop, not a protected realm. Get the fuck out and run!” one barista yelled, shoving a panicking man back into the throng before hauling ass towards the nearest arch.

Going back to Paradise was not an option, the whateverthefuck it was would be coming from that direction. Hell. She could try to get to Hell. If she couldn’t, she’d dive into one of the other realms. They would be better than nothing. Plus, she realized as she ran, souls were still trying to hide in stores and shops and restaurants.

“GET TO A REALM, NOT A STORE!” Lily yelled over and over, thankful she didn’t need to breathe anymore as she urged her feet faster and faster.

People bumped into her from all sides, trying to get to safety. One woman was running the opposite direction, towards the thing, and Lily grabbed her arm, skidding them both to a stop.

“It’s coming from there,” Lily snapped, dragging the woman along by her arm.

“But my Paradise is back there!”

“Your Paradise is safe—”

“ I want to be safe!” the woman wailed, beating Lily with her fist.

Fuck you too. Lily swallowed down the rage and fear, trying to tamp them down into something useful. “Get into a realm, then!”

“I’m an atheist—”

“You’re a fucking idiot! Your atheism doesn’t matter right now. If you want to be safe, find a realm and get into it, or you will experience pain you can’t imagine. Now MOVE!” Lily threw her towards an arch—she didn’t know which one, she just saw its occupants waving fleeing people inside—then kept running.

The Hallway was emptying fast. A few, like her, were running to help others, or trying to get to a distant haven.

Behind her, people started screaming in terror—not, thankfully, in pain. The wet, high-pitched roar was joined by something else that sounded almost hyena-like but bone-chillingly wrong .

Prey. She was prey, a deer fleeing from a predator she couldn’t hope to outrun or outfight.

Whatever it was, it was too fucking close. The Hallway was mostly empty, the arches to the realms packed with people huddling together and trying to move back.

Lily rounded a corner as more screaming started, and she heard the first pounding footsteps of something large echoing up the Hallway.

Cold dread sat in her stomach like a stone. She wasn’t going to make it.

A woman much shorter than her was hauling ass ahead, looking over her shoulder like an idiot in a horror movie. It slowed her down.

Lily caught up to her and grabbed her arm, guiding her towards the nearest archway, where people yelled encouragement and held out their hands.

Heavy, fast footsteps and more screeching—

Throat tight, veins buzzing, Lily shoved the woman forward, diving through the arch herself and skidding to a halt, half crashing into the wall of people just inside the gate.

Lily spun, pressing her back against them, hand automatically going to the sword at her waist.

Too close, she was too close to the arch, to the line where the gleaming floor beneath her feet met with the humble flooring of the Hallway.

The thing lunged around the corner and stopped, raising its wedge-shaped head to sniff at the air.

Nausea swam, every fiber, every shred of her rebelling at being in the presence of it. The thing ran on all fours, long limbs out of proportion with its comparatively stocky body. Its paws resembled long, slender hands with seven digits and too many joints. The claws flexing on the stone floor were long and curved, at least half as long as Lily’s forearm.

The thing had to be eight feet tall at the shoulder, its head set almost directly into the bulky shoulders, with no mouth that she could see. Eyes the size of dinner plates were a pulsing shade that Lily had never seen before—the closest approximation she could give was a sick, toxic green. It reared back onto its hind legs, almost like a bear, and let loose another awful, shredding, baby’s-wail roar that had Lily drawing her sword for comfort, if nothing else.

There was the mouth. Instead of lying horizontally, like every other fucking mouth Lily had ever seen, it split the creature’s skull from forehead to throat vertically, opening its face like a book. If that book was lined with rows of teeth similar to sharks’.

Sharkie.

Fear like Lily had never known locked her body in place.

Sharkie promised. She promised. Paradise is safe, the safest place…

A distant horn split the air.

The horns of Hell had never sounded so damned lovely.

The thing launched itself forward and disappeared, presumably to do battle. Lily and everyone else breathed a collective sigh of relief.

Then she saw milky pale fingers curl around the edge of the arch. Three of them, overlong and multi-jointed, the flesh mottled towards the tips with sick gray, the glossy black claws set in nail beds that seemed red and inflamed. The fingers rested there for a moment, just long enough for a few others to notice them—

The other creature jolted into view, its round, lipless mouth overfull of jagged, black anglerfish teeth chattering with its awful not-hyena laughter.

The other thing had been terrifying. This? This was human nightmares made manifest.

Its limbs were wiry, at odds with its stumpy torso, pale white and gray flesh hanging off its bones. The head though…The head and the face Lily would never stop seeing. When she someday went to the Void, she would see it still. The oval head was smooth, with two small holes that seemed to function as nostrils set high in its flat face. The huge eyes had no discernible difference between sclera, iris, and pupil—matte, and such a mottled, soulless black that it was like looking into a grave. They were rimmed with the same irritated redness as its claws, as was its twisted nightmare of a mouth, like its body was rebelling against its own existence.

Lily didn’t even have time to flinch when it lunged for her, crashing face-first into whatever invisible barrier stretched across the archway.

The people behind her moved away, all of them pressing farther back into whatever realm they were in, leaving Lily standing alone in front of the arch, face-to-face with another Universe’s evil. The instinctual revulsion and horror remained, but…safe. She was safe.

But the longer she stared at it, watching it test the barrier, gnashing those awful teeth when it couldn’t get her, the angrier she got.

My Universe. My home. Our Afterlife. How many of my friends and my people did it kill to get here? This thing could have hurt Bel, my Bel. It would happily hurt Sharkie, my child.

The thing laughed, chattering its awful teeth in Lily’s face, slamming its claws against the barrier before pressing its face against it and smearing its long black tongue across the shimmering wall of power. Laughing, laughing, laughing—

Lily cut its head off with one swing.

Her time working at the Hellp Desk had prepared her for the jarring sensation of a weapon making contact with a body. The crunch of bone snapping, the spray of blood, the slight drag of a blade as the friction of cutting through flesh slowed its path. Her time training with Bel and the demons had prepared her to have good form and strike true.

The head toppled to the floor, jaw still twitching, still chattering its teeth for a few seconds until whatever brain activity it had ceased. The body slumped the other direction, spilling green-black blood all over the floor. It sizzled and burned away as it pooled against the invisible barrier of the arch.

Get fucked.

Lily stared at the line of sizzling blood, working the variables, trying to understand how they had gotten through.

Either it was a fluke of a particularly intense battle, in which their defenses had failed enough to allow not just one, but two, creatures into the Universal Hallway, or they’d lost completely. But if that was the case, there would have been more of them, right?

Someone came to stand next to her. The hum of power prickling over her skin told her without looking that it was a deity.

She kept watching the blood sizzle as it ran along the invisible barrier, smoking as it connected with the pristine mother-of-pearl surface—

Every thought, every feeling, eddied out of Lily’s head.

She followed the line of the arch upwards, took in every gleaming, heinously perfect inch, then looked at the deity at her side.

He dipped his head in acknowledgment, a small smile gracing his lips. “Your reputation is well deserved, Ms. Lily.”

Lily stared resolutely at him. Small, she felt so small and wrong here. She didn’t belong. Would never belong. A stain on the fabric of the existence of this place. A stain of a soul. She hated it. Hated this.

Her tone was flat, but her voice seemed very far away, as if it knew it had no business being anywhere near here.

“God.”