Chapter 2

Madison

I woke up with a start, but my eyes refused to open right away. Thoughts rushed through my mind, urging my body to catch up and start moving.

There were so many things to do. I had to open the restaurant for lunch soon. Before that, I still needed to stop at the bank to get some cash for Claire, then pay for Sam's cousin's wedding present. I didn't even know the names of the couple. I should call Sam to ask.

Wasn't I supposed to drive Mom to the dentist this morning too?

My mind seemed fuzzy.

I had to force my eyes to open somehow, then go upstairs and see Mom. I hadn't left the house without saying goodbye to her since I was old enough to walk to the school bus on my own. Her "I love you" and a kiss on a cheek were like a good luck charm for me before starting my day.

"It's a nice body." A deep voice burst through the remnants of the sleepy fog lingering around my mind. "It's rather pleasing to the eye."

"All bodies are essentially the same, Invi. Except that this one housed an undeserving soul," another deep voice replied somberly, triggering the memories of the dark alley and the glowing dumpster.

Had it been a dream?

If so, was I still dreaming?

I really needed to wake up already. The inability to move or even open my eyes unnerved me.

"Where do you think her soul is now, Avar?" the voice called Invi asked. "I didn't see it leave the body."

"In the human world, one can't see a soul. It becomes visible only here."

"Let's hope it doesn't linger in Purgatory and demand this body back. I'd most certainly want it back. It's a lovely one."

A grumpy sound followed the last comment. It appeared the one called Avar didn't appreciate his opponent's admiration of "the body" they were talking about.

"What body was it?" I wondered, trying to force my mind to climb out of the fog and my limbs to start moving.

"Stop staring at it," Avar demanded.

"I'd love to. Sadly, I don't have another body to stare at instead. Give me some more transcendence potion. I'll go to the human world again and get one all for myself to stare at."

"I knew it was a mistake to bring you along," Avar groaned. "You never stop at ‘just a look,' do you? Go home now, Invi. I have a lot of work to do, and I don't have much time. Physical bodies don't last long without a soul."

The one called Invi muttered something disgruntledly in response. Then, a weird swishing sound came, as if someone dragged something large over the floor.

Sensations returned slowly. The mattress felt weirdly firm, rock-hard actually. I stretched, my body finally responding to my mind. My feet hit something that crinkled and stank.

This wasn't my bed.

Alarm jolted me fully awake. My eyelids flew open at last.

The glass dome above me did not belong to my basement bedroom, neither did the view of the sunny skies beyond.

"What the..."

I rose on shaky elbows, squinting from the familiar purple glow. In the daylight, it proved far less blinding, allowing me to see the large figure inside it. A tall, bipedal creature with two pairs of horns stood just a couple of steps away from me. It turned, holding a long pane of glass in its hands and...in its tentacles.

"Aaaah!" I scrambled away as far as the long glass box I sat in would allow.

"Urgh!" the creature boomed, startled, and dropped the pane. The glass hit the stone floor and shattered into a million tiny pieces.

"You're alive?" The thing frowned.

"Do you want me dead?" With trembling fingers, I gripped the edges of the glass box I was in.

It was a long box, shaped suspiciously like a coffin. Kicking and slipping on the smooth glass, I desperately tried to get out. A black plastic bag at my feet burst open. Empty Styrofoam trays, foil wrappers, and other foul-smelling non-recyclables shot into the air like giant, disgusting confetti.

Tossing a leg over the edge of the glass box, I heaved myself out of it and fell. Or I would've fallen, if a thick glowing tentacle hadn't caught me and held me over the floor.

Panic exploded through me.

"Let me go!"

I pounded with both fists against the purple tentacle. It felt solid but looked transparent enough to see the floor and my feet through it.

What was this thing?

"Calm down, human," it rumbled, and I recognized one of the voices talking earlier. Avar, I remembered the name.

"Let go of me. Now!"

"And let you fall on the hard floor into the pile of broken glass?" Avar arched a bushy eyebrow, obviously unimpressed by my decision to leap out of the box.

A "pile of glass" was an exaggeration. The shards littered the floor in a thin layer. But it would still hurt if I fell. I stopped struggling, holding my hands away from the tentacle.

"Then set me down. I'll be fine. I'm wearing shoes."

All my clothes were still on, not just the shoes. Nothing was missing from my after-hours outfit for cleaning the kitchen: a pair of worn jeans, a red washed-out t-shirt, and old running shoes.

"If I set you down," he said, "promise me you won't do something stupid, like try to run. A physical body is too fragile. You must take care."

Running was exactly what I planned to do the moment my feet touched the ground.

I glanced around. Where was I?

The room under the glass dome was round. Instead of walls, shelves and display cabinets surrounded it in a spiral that spread out and downwards, as if we were on top of a mountain enclosed in glass.

A lovely flowery scent filled the air through a round opening in the glass that led out onto an open patio edged with bushes of the most purple lilacs I'd ever seen. The view of the ravine below the patio proved we really were high on top of a mountain. There were no exit signs. I had no idea where to run .

"Do you promise not to do anything that might damage your body?" Avar demanded.

"Fine. Yes. I promise."

It made sense. Ultimately, I had no desire to damage my body either.

The tentacle gently deposited me in the middle of the spiral design inlaid in the stone floor.

I took a step back and looked up at the creature, who was about twice as tall as me and several times bigger. It had a male torso with broad shoulders and thick, well-muscled arms. Two pairs of horns sprouted from his bald head. The two in the front were short and straight. The two on the back curled like the horns of a ram over his ears. Two tentacles extended from his sides right under his arms. I had to tilt my head back to see his face that was partially obscured by a long beard of something resembling thin snakes.

I backed away from the monster, glass crunching under my unsteady feet.

"Let me go, please," I asked softly. I didn't even care who he was or where we were, as long as I could make it home in one piece.

He leaned with his hip against the table and folded his arms over his chest. His long tentacles remained in motion, undulating around his thighs.

"I'm afraid I can't do that."

I remembered with a stab of fear that he'd spoken rather meanly about me with Invi. For some reason, this creature disliked me.

Was he punishing me for something?

"I've never seen you in my life before," I pleaded. "Trust me, I would've remembered if I had. If you hate me, there must be some mistake."

His broad chest rose with a deep breath .

"Hate is a very strong emotion. It would imply that I care, which I do not."

"You called me an undeserving soul . Why? Undeserving of what?"

"Of Invi's admiration."

"Who is Invi?"

"My brother." He shrugged a shoulder. "One of them."

"You have more?" The fact that this otherworldly creature had a family shocked me as much as that he existed at all.

"I have six brothers and seven sisters, if you must know."

No, I didn't need to know that or anything else about him as long as he'd just deliver me back to where he took me from.

"You had no right to take me," I spat through my teeth, trying to hold back both anger and fear.

"I acquired you for my collection." He spread his tentacles in a wide gesture, encompassing the rows upon rows of shelves and display cases that cascaded down the mountain in a seemingly endless spiral.

"But I'm a person, not an exhibit."

"You can be both," he replied, unconcerned.

"It's not right. You can't keep a person the way you keep things. It's cruel, immoral, unethical, and—"

Propping his hands on his hips, he threw his head back and erupted into thunderous laughter.

"My dear human," he boomed. "I am a mortal sin —the very essence of immorality. In what world did you imagine I would behave ethically?" He shook his head at my naivety. "I'm the Sin of Greed. I take what I like and never give anything back. Today, I got a chance to possess a mortal body. I saw yours. I took it. And now, it's mine."

"That's... That's kidnapping," I struggled for words, choked by terror. "It's a crime, you monster. "

He squinted at me. "It's not like you've been living the life of a saint either, human."

The condescending note in his voice irked me. Anger overpowered the fear for a moment.

"My name is Madison." I hiked up my chin indignantly. "Maddy for friends, but not for you ."

He huffed. "And mine is Avaricia, one of the mortal sins, or Avar for short. I'm certainly not a ‘monster,' even if your people made me look like one."

" My people? Who?"

A thought that someone from my restaurant might've been messing with him somehow rushed through my head. That would explain why he was angry with me. But mortal sin? What was that supposed to mean?

"By ‘your people,' I meant humans in general." He waved a tentacle in a vague gesture. "Aren't they your people?"

"All humans?"

"Those who believe in sin and virtue, in heaven, and hell. Their beliefs created it all, me included." He spread his arms and tentacles wide. "Welcome to Purgatory."

"Purgatory?" I gasped, and a breath caught in my throat. "Is that where we are?"

"A fitting place for someone like you." He wound one of his beard's long, slim appendages around his finger with a contemplative expression. "Though I really don't understand how your soul is still in your body."

"Did you expect it not to be in it?"

"That was my expectation. Yes."

"You tried to kill me?" I glanced around. People went to the purgatory after they died, didn't they? A wave of horror washed over me. "Am I dead?"

My stomach knitted into knots. I hiccupped, afraid I might throw up right there onto his glass strewn floor.

Avar cupped his chin, his "beard" spreading aside to accommodate the gesture.

"No, my dear. You are very much alive, in every sense of the word. Which is baffling, to tell you the truth."

"Are you..."

Are you planning to correct that? I was going to ask but didn't. Fear seized my throat at the thought that he might want to rectify the "mistake" and murder me. Besides being an otherworldly being, he was also bigger and probably stronger than me. It wouldn't take him much to end me.

A single word flattered from my parted lips, instead.

"Why?"

"Why I find it baffling, you mean?"

"Why do you hate me so much?"

"Like I said, I don't hate you—" he stated evenly, but I'd had enough of that cool, indifferent attitude of his when my life as I knew it might be gone for good because of him.

"Of course you do. You want me dead!" I shrieked. "You clearly are disappointed that I didn't die when you stole me."

"First of all, I don't steal, I take. " He seemed taken aback by my outburst.

"What's the difference? Taking what doesn't belong to you is stealing."

"There are some fine nuances in your situation. All people die. Sooner or later, you'd end up here anyway."

"I would much rather it happened later than sooner."

"And speaking of stealing..." he continued, ignoring my statement, "...you took your husband's research and dumped it in the garbage. Do you even understand the significance of his work? You might be the legal beneficiary of his possessions after his death, but that research didn't belong to you. It belonged to humanity. So, technically—"

I raised a hand, stopping him .

"What husband?"

"Fine, your ex -husband," he corrected. "You ruined his legacy by trying to destroy the results of his lifelong work. I saved it, and I will keep it. But because of you, it is as good as lost to humankind forever."

"What husband?" I repeated, dumbfounded. "I don't have one. Not even an ex ." I thrust both my ringless hands his way. "See? I'm not married. Never have been. I've no husband. No boyfriend. Heck, I haven't even been laid for years... Not that it's any of your business, of course."

His thick eyebrows moved closer together as he slid a quick once-over down my frame.

"Why not?"

"You want to know why my personal life is not your business?"

"No. I want to know why you haven't had sex. You are a grown woman in the prime of your current lifetime, aren't you? Why not then?"

I nearly choked on my breath at his audacity.

"That's not what you have to worry about. You have clearly mistaken me for someone else. I never had a husband. I haven't stolen any research. The only things I was throwing into the garbage that night was the actual garbage." I pointed at the mess in and around the glass box on the table. "You have to take me back. Please. I won't even demand an apology. Mistakes happen. Just bring me back to where you took me from, and I'll forget we ever met."

It'd be hard to forget someone like him, but once I'm back in my own bed safe and sound, I'd probably think of all of this as a dream.

He shifted his weight to another foot, looking slightly uncomfortable.

"Sadly, I can't do it. If you really aren't the ex-wife of Professor Lozhkin, I apologize for bringing you here. I really thought you came back to the alley to toss more of his stuff into the trash."

"I said I don't need your apologies. Just take me back."

"Like I said, I can't do it. I can't give. I only take."

My heart dropped.

"What do you mean? How hard would it be to bring me back and pretend none of this ever happened?"

"It's not the difficulty of traveling between our worlds that's stopping me, Madison. It's the act of giving. I'm incapable of it. In the millennia of my existence, I have never returned a single thing I took."

"It's never too late to start," I suggested, holding on to hope with all I had.

"You don't understand, my dear. My very nature is to take. Giving would kill me."

"But giving is a beautiful thing—"

"I said it will not happen!" His voice thundered so loudly, it was a shock that the glass dome didn't shatter. Bright red flashed through his purple glow. His beard undulated wildly, spreading aside.

I backed away. My butt hit a display cabinet behind me.

"Careful!" He stretched both his arms and his tentacles toward me and the cabinet. "These things are irreplaceable."

Was I supposed to become one of his "things" now? I glanced at the glass box he prepped on the table.

"You want to put me in there?" I whimpered, pressing my back to the flimsy cabinet. "Is that what you have it ready for?"

"Well, a physical body is a highly perishable thing. I had to preserve it. Now that you happened to be alive, however..." He gave me a long, assessing look.

"You want to kill me?" I finished for him.

"Actually, no..." he said as if thinking out loud. "I believe I far prefer you alive. Around here, a live human is just as rare as a physical body but can also be far more amusing."

He took a step toward me, and I cowered under the curio cabinet with some shiny stones assembled in elaborate metal frames.

"You find my distress amusing?" Unwelcome tears blurred my vision, burning my eyes.

He paused, taking in my shivering body and my flushed face.

"No, my dear, your distress brings me no joy whatsoever. In fact, I find seeing you like this highly unpleasant." He crouched down to my level. "There is no need to fear death, Madison," he spoke kindly, as if explaining to a child. "Death is simply a passage from one world to another. Your soul is immortal. But if you're fond of the body you're currently in, you can keep it. I promise as long as you're with me, no one will separate you from it until its natural deterioration."

THAT PROVED ODDLY REASSURING . He certainly seemed big and powerful enough to stop anyone from harming me. As long as he didn't harm me himself, of course.

A tentacle reached for me, and I shrank back from it. He immediately jerked away the undulating appendage.

"All right, I won't touch you against your will either," he assured me. "I take care of what's mine. I'll keep you safe. Now, will you relax a little and stop looking like a kicked puppy? It makes me feel extremely uncomfortable to see you miserable like that." He made a face as if he'd bitten into a lemon. "Since you seem to be attached to that body of yours, you can keep it for as long as it'll hold you. I won't put it on display until after your soul departs it." He looked pleased with himself, and I would bet my restaurant he saw it as a generous offer.

"What if I live for another sixty years or more?" I asked carefully. At my thirty-two, it was a reasonable lifespan to expect.

"Then you'll live here for sixty years or more," he replied casually.

Chilling dread gripped my insides. My limbs shook. But cowering under the cabinet would not get me home.

I fisted my hands, silently gathering my resolve. Since he wouldn't bring me back, I'd have to do it on my own. If I ever wanted to see my friends, my mom, and my restaurant ever again, I had to stay strong. I had to think. I needed to learn more about this place to find a way out of here.

"Let's figure out a suitable accommodation for you meanwhile." Avar straightened to his full height. The broken glass crunched under his feet. He lifted a foot and scowled at the shards. The mess clearly displeased him, but the glass didn't cut him. He didn't seem to be in pain. There was no blood on the floor, either. Could he even bleed?

Avar obviously wasn't human. Glowing and semi-transparent, he didn't even seem real. If I squinted, I could see the shelves behind him through him. Yet he wasn't an incorporeal ghost. His large, tall shape was solid. I felt it when he held me with his tentacle.

He wore not a stitch of clothing, and his crotch area was Ken-doll smooth. At least in the most obvious visual sense, Avar wasn't a he or a she or anything in between.

A mortal sin?

How could that be true?

He bent over the floor and made a sweeping gesture in the air with his open palms. The glass shards slid along the floor, shifting in a circle, then gathering into a pile. Avar waved his hands in the air, and the shards thinned, then melted like ice in hot air. Unlike ice, however, they didn't leave a puddle on the floor. They just disappeared without a trace.

"Where did the glass go?" I blinked, dumbfounded.

Avar flicked a wrist. "Into the ether."

"Ether?"

"Exactly." He nodded. "Everything comes from and returns to the ether. Didn't you know that?"

"No. Actually, I did not know that."

"Well, now you do."

Whether I wanted to or not, I needed to know more about this being since both my life and freedom were in his hands and...well, in his tentacles too.

"Who is your brother? The one who was here before?" I asked as he frowned at the garbage strewn over the table. "The one you called Invi?"

He jerked his head my way, his beard's appendages flaring to the sides, resembling a chrysanthemum for a moment.

"You heard him here?"

"Yes. Both here and back at the dumpster." Maybe I could convince Invi to take me back since Avar refused?

"Invidia is the Sin of Envy..." Avar heaved a sigh. "He went back home now, and he'd better stay there. I don't trust him around my collection. That scoundrel always wants what others have."

He glared at the valley outside the patio, in the direction where I suspected Invi's home must be.

"It's understandable," I said. "As the Sin of Envy, it'd be in his nature, I suppose."

"Is that so?" Avar squinted at me. "How are you so very understanding about his nature, but so disapproving of mine? If you excuse him for being envious, why can't you understand me holding on to my possessions?"

It was the "possession" part that aggravated me the most. How could he expect me to be forgiving about treating me as such?

"Why does it matter how I feel about you?" I snapped. "You said you don't care, anyway."

"I shouldn't care." He stomped around, moving the items on the shelves and adjusting the cabinets around us. Stopping abruptly in front of me, he folded his arms on his chest and propped his tentacles on his hips. "I shouldn't care, but I do. I derive pleasure from every exhibit in my collection. It irritates me to know that you dislike me."

"You really need me to like you?" I asked incredulously.

Did the Sin of Greed crave affection?

He paused in concentration, as if listening to his own desires.

"I would prefer it if you did. Yes," he confessed.

I folded my arms over my chest, too, mimicking his stance as much as I could without the tentacles.

"To be liked, people usually do nice things for each other. Being kind helps. What have you done for me? You snatched me away from people and places I hold dear. You told me I'm to stay here until the day I die. "

"I said ‘for as long as your body will hold you,'" he corrected. "Your body is mine, but your soul was always free to go as it pleases. For some reason, however, it chose to cling to this body."

" For some reason? Do you not understand why people don't want to die?"

"I thought I explained it clearly that death is simply a switching point in a soul's journey. A soul doesn't cease to exist by vacating a body." He slid an assessing gaze down my frame, tilting his head. "I have to admit it is actually a very nice body. I can see how you'd be reluctant to part with it."

There was that interest in his eyes again as when I'd mentioned I hadn't had sex for some time. It made my skin tingle in response in a way I oddly did not find unpleasant.

As unusual as Avar looked, there was as much mesmerizing in his purple shimmer as there was terrifying in his giant shape. The longer I stared at him, the more drawn in I felt, and the stronger the fear pulsed in my chest. Like I wished to take a step off a cliff, even knowing that the fall would kill me.

"What exactly do you need my body for?" I asked. "Are you sure it's just to display it?"

Despite having nothing between his legs, Avar didn't appear to be indifferent to sex. And now, I really didn't know how to take his insistence on claiming my body without the soul.

"What else could there be?" He blinked innocently.

I squinted at the garbage filled glass box.

"Why did you take the garbage bag too?"

He followed my eyes with his, then rubbed the back of his neck uncertainly.

"It looked like it belonged with you."

"Belonged with me." I stared at him. "Kind of like a Barbie accessory? "

"Barbie?" He looked confused for a moment, then his beard parted with a smile. "You mean the doll?"

"You know about the Barbie doll?"

Should I be shocked? After all, we met in my world. He spoke a language I understood and claimed to be the embodiment of human beliefs. It wouldn't be much of a stretch to imagine he was familiar with many human cultures as well, and Barbie was well known pretty much all over the globe.

"As much as I despise many of the actions of humans that I've witnessed over my existence," he explained, "I go to your world from time to time to retrieve items for my collection. Also, on our last birthday celebration, Mother gifted us a magical vision box that helps learn the most current things about your world. Yes, I know about Barbie. Come to think of it..." He scratched his chin. "Your body would've looked like a doll in that glass box, with or without the garbage bag accessory."

"And would you have just looked at it? Nothing else?"

He glanced at me in question, then understanding spread across his face.

"Are you implying that my intentions were to violate a lifeless body? Madison, that's simply disgusting," he scolded.

A blush warmed my face. "In my defense, you did describe yourself as the very essence of immorality."

"Immorality is not the same as grossness or vulgarity. Like most people and all my brothers, I enjoy things that bring pleasure, including sex. But like everyone else around here, I engage in such activities exclusively with souls. A body-less soul is a far more appropriate sex partner than a soul-less body." A shudder ran through his massive frame as he muttered to himself, "Sex with a motionless body? It'd be like humping a pile of discarded clothes."

I tried to process all the incredible things he was saying .

"Are you saying that souls have sex?"

"Of course they do. I mean they can if they want to, here in Purgatory and in any of the paradises where sex is possible."

"Is there more than one paradise?"

"Thousands of them." He nodded. "Humans collectively possess a boundless imagination."

"And some of those places allow sex?"

"Many of them do. Generally when crossing into another world, people want to leave their sufferings behind, but not their pleasures. However, it all depends on every soul's beliefs of course. Would you prefer to be in a paradise without sex?"

"I would really prefer to be back on Earth, actually."

He squinted at me again.

"That's strange. Souls usually dislike returning to the human world. But then again," he pondered, "many dislike waiting in Purgatory too. Souls are restless creatures who often prefer to be on the way to some place they think is better. Not all paradises are as great as they think, you know. Some of them are pretty boring. Many of those without sex are, for sure."

"How do souls even have sex without a body? Like...how do you have sex?" I tried very hard not to stare at his crotch, despite its perfectly decent smooth appearance. "You're a spirit, aren't you?"

"I'm an incorporeal entity," he clarified with pride. "I don't need a physical body. I have a presence without it."

"But doesn't one need a body in order to have sex?" I insisted, wondering how we even came to this point in our conversation, but needing to know the answer anyway.

"In order to procreate, yes, having a physical body is important," he said. "However, sex is so much more than that. True pleasure is felt in your soul, and pleasure is the essence of a sin's existence. Of course, I can have sex. After all, the Sin of Lust is one of my brothers too." He tugged at his beard in contemplation. "I don't think I'm going to let you meet him, either. In fact, there is no need for you to meet any of my brothers at all. I don't share what's mine."

"But I'm not yours," I said quickly, anxious to set things straight between us. "I don't know what laws you have here, but if human beliefs created your Purgatory, then my soul is supposed to be free. That is the basis of every belief I know. And since my soul is free, you can't have it. And because it's in this body, you can't have sex with it either. You promised I could keep it, and I don't want you to have sex with it."

"You don't?" He looked shocked and genuinely disappointed. "Why not? I mean, sex wasn't my intention when I took your body. But now that your soul is staying in it, why not? Why deprive yourself of the pleasure I could give you?"

"Free will," I blurted out the first thing that came to mind. "I don't want to have sex with you. Ever. You stole me from my world. You brought me here without my permission. Why do you even think I'd want to have sex with you?"

He stretched his neck with a grunt, then started picking up the garbage from the glass box on the table and stuffing it into the ripped bag. He didn't use his "ether magic" to dispose of it, looking too distracted by his thoughts. I wondered if he forgot that he even possessed it.

"Fair enough," he finally agreed, to my utter surprise. "No sex it is, then."