Louise the Damned

A teenage Goth named Louise & her best friend die in a car accident. When Louise escapes Heaven to rescue her friend from the underworld, unexpected events happen. The ending may surprise you...

It was a tragic event: speeding car smashed headfirst into a tree, screaming sirens, jaws of life, two dead teenage girls one week shy of high school graduation, ruined faces unrecognizable and hidden inside closed coffins, mournful organ music.  It was a tragic event that would have made headlines in a real city with real parks, traffic lights that worked most of the time, and a city council that understood zoning laws.  So imagine what it did to little Canaan Lake (population 6,947).  The aftermath tore through that small southern town like a cyclone.

Small towns being small towns, they mourned in public and gossiped in private.  Everyone knew that girl, that girl being Louise Parker, would come to no good end anyway.  Everyone knew that other girl, that other girl being Bailey Morrison, got caught up in Louise’s nonsense and wasn’t it a shame it had to end that way.  They prayed for Jesus to remember Bailey simply lost her way.  Those same southern Christians offered prayers for Louise, but doubted Jesus had anything in mind for the girl but Hellfire.

 

They had it all wrong.  Louise Parker, Canaan Lake’s only Goth in history, went to Heaven looking in exactly like she did on Earth: black leather jacket, vampire-white powdered skin, dyed black hair, nose ring, and vulture glare.  Louise Parker, who stopped attending church in fifth grade and whose only goal in life was escaping the town everyone else loved, began her new life in the afterlife just outside the Pearly Gates.

But poor Bailey Morrison and her shiny blonde hair, bright white teeth, and parent-approved pastel wardrobe went to Hell.  Bailey Morrison, who sat next to her parents every Sunday at the Tree of Life Baptist Church and always played the game, woke up nailed to a cross in a vast field of lost souls down below. 

You among the living better listen.  There are many paths to Heaven, but you better start walking one with your own feet.  Spirituality is a verb.  Get with the program.

 

Anyway, the first few minutes of the afterlife are a little like being born: confusing and terrifying.  When Louise found her hands bound with a golden rope, and the thing holding that rope was a tall, muscular, pissed-off looking supernatural being with big white wings wearing armor and a big battle sword strapped to his waist, she did what any sane person would do: scream and try to run away.

The escape plan didn’t work out, of course.  Peter the Guardian Angel gave the rope a good yank and Louise fell face first into the clouds, which looked soft as cotton candy but were actually hard as concrete. He gave the rope another pull and all the sudden that dead girl was magically standing next to him again. 

Louise was still wailing so the angel pointed a long angel finger at her mouth, muting the dead teenager like someone casually changing channels with a TV remote.  “Hush,” he said.   She couldn’t speak, but Louise kept pulling away and struggling, so Peter pointed that finger at her again.  She heard him say “That’s enough out of you!” and everything went black. 

 

Sometime after being muted and knocked out by the magic fingered, sword-toting angel Louise woke up in a chair.  Another angel, this one ancient with a beard like Santa Claus, seated behind a big metal desk that looked like something from an army surplus store sat across from her.  “Say your name and scan the card, girl!” the old one barked.

After she tried to speak, the old angel sighed and said “Guardian, un-mute her.”

“Sorry, Metron.”  Peter, the magic finger-wielding angel, pointed at her mouth and produced a plastic card from somewhere inside his armor, then ran it through a scanner on Metron’s metal desk.   Church bells rang from all sides of the room and an electronic voice proclaimed “Winner!  Go straight to Heaven!”

Peter yelled, “YES!  No purgatory!  Praise God, we’re in!  Congratulations, Louise.”

Both of the angels looked at Louise, who raised her right hand like a school kid asking for a bathroom break.  “Can I ask a question now?”  Neither angel said anything, so she took that as a go-ahead.  “I’m really dead?”

The old angel pulled a yellowed parchment from inside his desk and turned to Peter.  “Guardian, didn’t you explain everything?”

Louise and Metron turned their gazes onto Peter, who glared back.  “No, I had to subdue her.  She was making a scene.”

“Okay then,” Metron said, perusing the parchment.  “Yes, dear, you are quite dead.  We don’t get many live ones in here.  You died in a car accident.  You and the other girl in the car, a Miss Bailey Morrison, you were driving, driving and texting �" not very bright �" and went headfirst into a tree.  My, my, another tree destroyed.  That tree was coming up on a hundred years old.  Planted by a man named.”

 “Wait, what?  Forget the damn tree, man!”  Louise slammed a fist on the desk.  “Where’s Bailey!  I wanna see her now!”

Peter pulled Louise away.  The office chair squeaked like a parrot as Metron leaned back and chuckled.  “Thor’s Hammer, you Guardians are all the same.  Take your hands off the poor girl.”  Louise leaned across the desk again towards the older angel, who said:  “You’re on your way to Heaven, so you won’t be seeing her again.  Ever.  Understand?”

Louise studied Metron’s face for a moment before the realization came to her.  “Wait.  You’re saying she’s not here?  Then, oh.  Wait.  That s**t’s real?  Hell?”

The old angel smiled and shrugged, he looked like a garden gnome without a hat sitting down.  “Sorry to say yes.  It’s all true.”

“Oh no.  I killed her, I was driving.”  She collapsed into the office chair and cried.  “It’s my fault, I killed Bailey, now she’s in Hell, right?”

“Well, each person decides their fate in the afterlife, girl.  There’s a lot of you, the world will spin on.  But think about that poor tree, would you?  Not too many like that one, and they’re not multiplying the way your kind is.”  Metron studied Louise for a few seconds, then looked at Peter, who was drifting off. 

“Guardian?  Peter!”  Standing up, leaning on the desk and groaning, Metron said, “Oh my ancient back.  Gotta put in for a new chair.  Anyway, I think this one might go catatonic if we don’t get her processed and inside quickly.  Inside will heal this pain, get her fixed up.”

“I could slap her around a little too,” Peter said.  “Always seems to work.:

“Guardian, come with me,” the old Angel told him.  On the way out, Metron placed a hand on Louise’s shoulder.  “Wait here, dear.  It’ll be okay.”

 

After what felt like eternity, Louise got tired of waiting, wiped her tears and stepped into a long hallway with identical wooden doors to find them.  The silence was overwhelming, just a clock ticking somewhere.   The hallway was empty except for two short angels pushing a gurney with trashcans.  Louise walked towards them just as they opened dumped trash down a metal chute that spit out bright light and screaming wind when opened.

“Excuse me,” Louise said, “Have you…”

“BACK AWAY FROM THE TRASH CHUTE!” one of the short angels screamed, slamming the chute closed, while the other angel slammed her against the wall.

Panting like a wolf, the angel holding Louise against the wall yelled: “You’re not supposed to be out here alone, that thing could suck you straight to Hell!  Be more careful.  Where’s your Guardian anyway?”

Several doors opened at the sound of the fracas.  Peter and Metron appeared from one of them.  Peter yelled, “Louise!  What are you doing out here!  Wait, we’re just about to get you inside, Metron got you a fastpass!”

Louise thought about eternity in Heaven for herself and eternity in Hell for her best friend.  It didn’t seem fair.  Something had to be done. 

She shoved the two janitor angels aside and threw open the trash chute.  Bright flashing lights appeared everywhere, like a million little kids with flashlights climbing out of a hole.  Screams climbed through hot, whistling winds, pushing her hair back around like octopus legs.  Doors flew open, everyone yelling “close the chute, close the chute!”  Without looking back, Louise leapt through the trash chute to Hell before any of Heaven’s servants could stop her.

 

A howling tornado swallowed her.  Garbage from heaven flew every which-way - champagne bottles, plastic bags, hymnbooks, empty food containers, and half-eaten food.  Just as the terrifying idea that she might spend the rest of existence spinning around in the universe’s biggest garbage disposal flashed across her consciousness, Louise felt like her head got caught on a nail at the top of a roller coaster and the rest of her body kept going to the bottom.  When the rubber band that her soul had turned into couldn’t take any more, there was a blinding explosion of light, excruciating pain - like a mountain grew a fist and punched her in the heart. 

She fell through a starless nighttime sky, gripping the brown wooden steering wheel of an out of control red sports car.  Something popped and a large, fat black cat with emerald green eyes appeared in the passenger seat staring at her, calmly telling her to “keep your hands on the wheel.”  When the car landed, tires screeching, it skidded to a stop and crashed into a giant black tree, glass smashing and metal groaning in the middle of a ruined forest of dead black trees, nothing growing or alive. 

Later, the cat was licking her fingers and she jerked away yelling, “Jesus Christ!”  

The cat stared at her calmly, blinking.  “Nope, just me.  Twitch.  Your soul.  Don’t ask why I’m out here, and not in there,” bowing his big head slightly towards her chest.

“Oh,” Louise said, palming the middle of her chest.  “That’s what this pain is?”  She looked forward, and then started to scream.  “OH MY GOD WHAT’S THAT!”

A surprised looking and very dead demon, long arms and clawed hands resting peacefully on the hood, was pinned between the car and the tree.  Like something straight out of Dante’s Inferno: coal-black skin, two sharp horns, pointed ears, open red eyes and a wide-open mouth full of sharp yellow fangs.  Twitch the Cat whispered: “I don’t know, but let’s get out of here.  Ease out of the car real careful, and let’s tiptoe away.  One, two…”

Laughter rang out.  “Not so fast, demon-slayers,” a shrill voice yelled.  Thousands of rats ran onto the car’s hood, squirming and climbing over each other, then righted themselves and ran in a blindingly fast circle that transformed into a beautiful, demonic woman: Long black hair, red dress, skin pale as a fresh corpse, and solid black eyes.  “You may have killed Orfeo, but don’t try your luck with me!  Don’t move…now who are you?”

“I’m sorry, it was an accident,” Louise whimpered.  “I didn’t mean to kill anybody, we just fell out of the sky.  I swear!  I was in Heaven and escaped.” 

Before Louise could say anything else, the demon leaned through the shattered windshield, grabbed Louise by the wrists and stared into her eyes for a minute before breaking into more gales of laughter. “Unbelievable.  You’re telling the truth.  And you’re sorry?  My dear, you’re a hero!  I’ve been at war with this wretch for centuries!”

Wrenching free of the Female Demon’s grip, Louise said, “Lady, I don’t have the slightest idea what you’re talking about.”

The demon leapt to the ground and circled around the ruined car.  “Just call me Lilith.  Now by the rules, and there are lots of rules in Hell,” she said, rolling her eyes, “You still have rights to Orfeo’s kingdom �" which you landed in the middle of - since you killed him.  So let’s make a deal.  What do you need?”

 

Louise climbed out of the car, watching Lilith carefully.  “I need to find my best friend that I died with, maybe you’ve heard of her?  Bailey Morrison, from Canaan Lake, Alabama?  Then I have to get us back to Heaven, or maybe Earth.”

The rat-lady demon smiled.  “Can’t say I’ve heard of her, but names don’t mean too much here, really.  If you’re looking for fresh arrivals, she’ll be hanging around the cornfield.  About an hour down that dirt road over there.  But if she’s here, she’s not going anywhere.  And I absolutely can’t get you back to Earth.”

Twitch, rubbing against Louise’s leg, said: “Then what can you do for us?”

“You’re a cheeky one, aren’t you,” the demon said, leaning in and sniffing the cat.  Louise grabbed Twitch and backed away.

Lilith pulled two fistfuls of rats from inside her dress sleeve and crammed them together, conjuring up a furry grey backpack.  “Here’s what I can do.  Voila, a backpack with machete, rope, and The Little Red Book of Hell.  Like I said, I can’t get you out of here.  But if you follow that dirt road into the middle of Hell you’ll find Purgatory.  The old Garden of Eden, an island surrounded by rivers of Hellfire.  There’s always some God holding court there.  They might help you, or they might vaporize you.  Honestly, I don’t care.  But at least we can stop this tedious conversation.”

Lilith walked to the car’s wreckage and ripped Orfeo’s head off his body.  “And who knows, maybe this’ll come in handy, plus I don’t want it around here,” Lilith told them, stuffing the head inside the backpack and handing it over.  “Our deal is done?”

“Uh, sure,” Louise said.  Then Louise and Twitch stood by the car staring at her. 

Lilith stomped her foot at them.  “Are you waiting for a song?  GET OUT OF HERE!  And if you come back here, I’ll feed you razor blades.  GET OUT!” 

She waved her arms and a thousand rats leapt from her sleeves, snapping fangs and waving their thick pink tails.  Twitch and Louise escaped down the twisting dirt road towards Hell’s center until the rodents grew bored and vanished.

 

Gliding far overhead, a demon named Azul flew with his black, leathery wings fully extended watching the scene unfold.  “Seriously, angel?  This clumsy Goth Girl is the one that gave you the slip?”

Peter the Guardian Angel, white feathery angel wings also fully extended, glided just above Azul.  “I was supposed to think someone would escape to Hell from Heaven?”

Azul rolled his red eyes and gave his wings a little flap.  “Whatever.  When the time’s right we catch her, shove that soul down her throat, and then WE fly back to Heaven.  Right?”

 “Yes, for the hundredth time.” Peter snapped back.  “Yes.  All of us.”

 

Louise and Twitch passed pools of Hellfire where misshapen yellow-eyed things sat munching on femurs or digging at the dirt.  The nightmare creatures glared at them, but none seemed interested enough to stop torturing whatever poor soul they had trapped by their feet.  Hills rose in the distance covered by dead black trees.  Pools of fire dotted the landscape everywhere.  Smoke rose into a starless night sky.  Sometimes the ground by the road squirmed, faces moving in the dirt, buried hands grasping in silence. 

“So, Twitch the Talking Cat, let me get this straight because we never got a chance to talk back there,” Louise said.  “You’re my soul?”

“Believe it or don’t believe it, but I’m your soul.”

“My soul is a talking male cat?”

“Yes.  Animals are pure, souls are pure, and the gender thing, it’s like a yin and yang, right?  We balance each other out.”

Louise hitched her thumbs under the backpack’s straps.  “I have no idea what you’re talking about.  But I do feel kind of empty, so something’s going on.  Why don’t you tell my how it happened, how you got outside of me.  ‘Cause that don’t make much sense to me, not at all.”

“Not much to me either, really,” the cat told her.  “But here’s what I think happened.  I don’t think people in Hell get to keep their souls, I guess they go to purgatory or get recycled, that could explain reincarnation or something.”  He walked alongside her, tail waving back and forth in the air.  “So I think we got knocked loose from each other when you jumped into that tornado thing connecting Heaven and Hell.”

“I’m still not convinced this isn’t a dream,” Louise said.

 

After a while they crested a big hill, and a huge cornfield with people hanging on crosses spread out before them.  An old wood sign hanging over the dirt road read Welcome to the Cornfields. 

“This is some kind of a bad joke, right?”  Louise asked Twitch.  The cat said he didn’t get it.  “Well they got all these poor souls hung up on crosses like scarecrows out here in this cornfield.  And a cross is supposed to be salvation?  It’s gruesome.”

“I’d think you’d be into all this stuff,” Twitch told her.  “Isn’t that what Goth is all about?  Death, destruction, evil and darkness?”

“You sure you’re my soul?  It’s not like that,” she said, kicking at him half-assed with a black boot.  “I just always felt sort of empty, and it’s also just a fashion thing.”

Twitch sat down on his haunches.  “Alright, it doesn’t matter anyway.  How do you plan on finding her?  There must be a hundred thousand corpses spread out on this field.”

“I’ll just check ‘em all,” she said.  “I’m not leaving her nailed to a cross in the middle of Hell.  I don’t know what she’s doing here in the first place anyway.  She’d do it for me, I guarantee it.  You can either help me or not.”  She ran down the dirt road towards the entrance to the gruesome field.

 

Every soul had a stone marker at their feet, and it was the cat that found Bailey after a few hours.  “Found her!  And you might not like this.”

Louise ran over and saw what Twitch meant.  Bailey hadn’t been restored to full health like Louise.  Her body was still busted up from the car accident, broken arm, face smashed up, one foot sticking out at an abnormal angle, but the most surreal thing about Bailey was her head - or what was left of it.  The top of her skull was just gone. 

Twitch lay down on the stone marker.  “Not a pretty sight, right?”

“It’s okay,” she said, staring at the ground.  “I can handle it.  We need to wake her up and move on.  Now get up and let me look at the marker.”

“Just get the book out and let’s resurrect her,” Twitch said, but Louise grabbed the cat and moved him, then saw what he’d been trying to hide:  “Brainless Bailey Morrison, Teenager, Murdered By Her Best Friend In Auto Accident.” 

Staring at the marker and her silent, mangled best friend nailed to the cross, Louise growled: “It was an accident, I didn’t murder anybody.”  She ripped the rat fur backpack away, threw it down and started thumbing through the Little Red Book of Hell.  “Here it is.  Resurrection.  Huh.  It says just cut the heart out of a soul-cat and shove it in the mouth of the corpse and they’ll come right back to life and get into Heaven.”  Twitch ran up a nearby tree and glared at her, his emerald eyes gleaming. 

She laughed and waved him back down.  “I was kidding, idiot.  Apparently you just repeat this spell in here, plus shove part of a recently deceased person’s fingernail under their tongue and slap their face a little.  Simple stuff.”

 

They pulled Bailey down and bound her hands and feet with the rope Lilith gave them as a precaution.  Louise bit a little bit of her own fingernail off and shoved it under Bailey’s tongue.  After slapping her face lightly and watching what was left of Sandra’s head loll around, Louise held the book in front of her and chanted: “HIC EN SPIRITUM, DE ANGELUS SANDRA, EN INFERNO INCORPORE!

 Sandra’s corpse sucked in a large breath and lurched at them.  Twitch scampered back up the tree, claws scratching noisily, while Louise screamed and fell backwards to the ground.  From a high branch, the cat said “I told you this was a stupid idea!”

Bailey screamed: “YOU DID THIS, LOU!  YOU!  YOU KILLED ME!”

Louise started sobbing.  “It was an accident, Bailey.  It was just a stupid car accident, I didn’t kill you!  Stop screaming!” 

But Bailey kept screaming “MURDERER!” and Louise kept sobbing.  After a few minutes, Twitch jumped out of the tree and padded just out of the corpse’s reach.  “Listen, Brainless.  Or Headless, more like it.  Your best friend’s trying to talk to you.  You made her drive because you were drunk!  Now show some gratitude and stop with the scary headless corpse crap.” 

“Brainless,” Bailey said.  “Not headless.  Brainless.  I still have a head,” and slumped on the ground, all the fight gone out of her.

“Let’s just rest for a few minutes, Twitch,” Louise said, waving the little red book at him.  “You want to go exploring or something?  Aren’t cats curious?”

A garbled, deep voice, like ball bearings bouncing around in a clothes dryer said: “I wouldn’t if I was you.  There’s an angel named Peter and a demon called Azul over behind that big mausoleum getting ready to attack us.  If you want to survive, untie your friend.  Move!  We’ll need everyone.”

Twitch froze. “Who said that?”

“Orfeo, idiots.  The demon head you’ve been carrying around.  Get me out the bag if you want to survive. NOW.” 

Louise lifted the demon’s head out, holding it by the horns like a bomb ready to blow up in her face.  The head told her, “Put me up on that rock where the cat’s sitting and untie the corpse.  Hurry!”  Decomposition was consuming Orfeo, but his red eyes still gleamed with the intensity of hot coals and rows of short yellow fangs warned off any sort of pity.  His voice was even more disembodied and bizarre outside of the rat fur backpack.

Louise frantically untied Bailey, who gagged at the sight of Orfeo’s head.  “What’s that thing?  Gross.” 

Orfeo’s head chuckled.  “Someone get her a mirror.  At least I’ve got a brain.”

Louise whispered: “Orfeo, is that Angel Peter here to kill me?  That’s why he’s with a demon?  He wasn’t very nice to me in Heaven, I can’t imagine he’s gonna be very cool down here.”

“You can’t kill what’s dead, duh.” Orfeo’s head told her.  “Azul’s his guide out of here, Peter wants your soul back in Heaven.  Then he gets to stay there.  So no, he’s not here to kill you, but the rest of us, I’m not so sure we’ll get out in one piece.  And you’re probably not safe anyway, he’s furious and isn’t exactly giving off sane, calm vibes.”

Brainless Bailey, Twitch, and Louise looked at each other.  They studied the demon’s head perched on the rock.  “I can read your minds.  Literally,” Orfeo told them.  “Make a choice to believe me or not, but you’ve got maybe thirty seconds.  Now listen.  When they attack, I’ll chant incantations that’ll stun Azul for a few seconds, so Bailey you can jump him.  Louise, grab that big branch on the ground and fight Peter.  We just need to distract them long enough for Twitch to escape.  They’re only after the soul, trust me.”

“Why are you helping us?” Louise asked.

“We’ll talk about it later.  HEADS UP!”  Huge wings flapped over their heads.  Peter the Guardian Angel and Azul the Demon landed.  Orfeo started chanting: “Orphano de caelo, vires, inutiles sunt sub oculis Dei!” Azul fell to his knees clutching his horned head and screamed. 

Louise grabbed the cat and tossed him like a shot put. “RUN TWITCH, RUN!” 

Peter grabbed Louise by the neck and kicked Azul, who was still writhing on the ground, overcome by Orfeo’s spell.  “GET UP, YOU ABOMINATION!  THE SOUL’S GETTING AWAY!  GO!”

Brainless Bailey vaulted from the ground and landed on top of Azul, clawing and beating the monster with her broken fists while he tried to stand up.  Louise wrestled free of her Guardian Angel and tried to run away but stumbled, crashed into an old gravestone and fell to the ground face first. 

“For the love of God,” Peter snapped, “cut it out you annoying girl!” and strode towards her.  She jumped up, swinging the big tree branch that had been lying on the ground as planned, and slammed it across the angel’s chest.  It connected with a huge clang against his brass armor breast plate and Peter fell backwards onto his elbows. 

“No more Mr. Nice Guy!” he yelled, standing up and pointing the same long finger he’d muted her with back at the Pearly Gates, only this time a brief bolt of lightning crackled and flew at Louise’s chest.  She convulsed and collapsed to the ground, shaking.  Peter walked over, knelt down and jerked her up by the head the way a human might pick up a basketball.   

When Louise stopped shaking, the angel tossed her at the foot of Bailey’s cross and moved stomped towards the chanting demon head, screamed “SHUT UP!” and backhanded it far away into the darkness.  Orfeo stopped chanting.  Finally released from the spell, Azul threw Bailey from his back, picked her up, and slammed her to the ground.  

Peter screamed: “Find the cat, fool!”  Azul took to the sky, black wings flapping.  The Guardian Angel scooped up the rope Twitch and Louise had used to bind Bailey before, hog-tied Louise ankles to wrists, crouched in front of her and stared into her blue eyes.  “Now quit messing around.  I’m only here to help.” 

 

When Azul didn’t return soon enough to placate him, Peter got extremely agitated, stomping in a circle around Bailey’s cross and screaming at the black sky.  “AZUL!  WHERE ARE YOU!”  Sitting down next to Louise, he groused: “See what you’ve done?  I have to consort with stupid, unreliable demons because of you.  Just shows you!  If you want something done right, you do it yourself, right!” 

He kept it up like that for a while, stomping around, knocking down empty crosses, punching trees, pulverizing occasional gravestones with solid kicks and screaming at the sky until the demon landed empty-handed.  “I can’t find the stupid cat, Angel.  I’m sorry, maybe you can try?”

Peter shoved the demon down and yanked his sword out.  “YOU CAN’T FIND A CAT?  A DEMON IN HELL CAN’T FIND A CAT?”  Azul tried to get up, but Peter slammed his foot onto Azul’s hairy black chest.

Azul groaned and grabbed the angel’s calf with both hands, digging his yellow claws in.  “NO!  I CAN’T FIND A CAT HIDING IN THE INFINITE REACHES OF HELL!  WHY DON’T YOU GO LOOK AND I’LL SIT HERE SCREAMING ABOUT WHAT AN IDIOT YOU ARE?  NOW LET ME UP!”  Peter lifted his foot from the demon’s chest and put his sword away, sighing and throwing his muscular arms up in frustration.

“Man,” Azul said, lifting himself up on his elbows, shaking his horned head.  “If you hadn’t screwed this up in the beginning and let the b***h escape, we wouldn’t be in this fix, so try some of that love and patience you fools are always going on about up there...”

“SHUT UP!”  The guardian angel swung around and kicked Azul’s head so hard it disintegrated in a cloud of bone and blood.  The demon’s body hesitated and fell backwards.

Peter knelt, huge wings extended and began beating the ground next to the decapitated demon’s body, screaming: “STAND UP, YOU MONKEY-WINGED LOW-BRED, LUCIFER-WORSHIPPING SON OF GOMORRAH!” 

But what was left of Azul didn’t move and when the angel finally realized what he’d done, his wings disappeared into the fold between his shoulders and his voice fell to a whisper:  “Azul, I’m sorry.  It’s not allowed, no creature can fall before me.”  Peter prayed.  “God forgive me.” 

Two bolts of white lightning hit the ground.  A pair of the sort of angels Louise grew up looking at in church - white robes, simple wings, beatific smiles, kind eyes, no swords or armor - appeared where the lightning struck and gently laid a hand on Peter.  The lightning struck in reverse from the from the ground back into the sky and all three disappeared, leaving only a single white feather from Peter’s wings floating in the air arcing back and forth until it landed on the ground.

With Peter gone, Louise’s voice returned.  Rolling around, still hogtied, she croaked: “Twitch, help…” but stopped when she saw Bailey’s body on the ground, unmoving, by all appearances ruined from doing battle with the now headless and destroyed Azul.  Overcome with grief, the bloody scene, and most of all battling an angel and demon, she passed out.    

Everything quieted down quickly after that.  Azul’s headless corpse shuddered once more and lay completely still, Bailey’s ruined body lay twisted on the ground, ancient gravestones lay in piles of dust all around them, stalks of corn slowly lifted from the ground where they’d been trampled in the battle, motionless bodies hung on crosses as far as they eye could see, and the underworld settled back into its normal semi-calm routine of Hellfire crackling around them, an occasional mournful wail in the distance, and anonymous dark creatures flying far overhead focused on their own dark business. 

 

Soon, Twitch crept back and surveyed the bizarre scene from behind a tree.   When he saw Louise lying on the ground he sprinted over and started licking her face.  She opened her blue eyes slowly. 

“Louise!  Praise God, I thought you were dead…I mean, deader.”

“Can’t kill what’s dead,” she said, and sniffed. 

“You taste all salty.  You were crying.  What happened?”

“Peter murdered Azul cause he couldn’t find you.  Two normal looking angels appeared in bolts of lightning and either wiped Peter out or took him somewhere else to punish him or something, I’m guessing. And I think the demon Azul killed Bailey.  Again.  So maybe you can kill what’s dead, cause she ain’t moving.” 

She squirmed on the ground.  “And of course as you might notice my Guardian Gngel tied my hands to my ankles behind my back and left me in the middle of Hell.  I’d really like someone to untie me.”

“So we’re screwed,” Twitch said.  “Catpaws aren’t cut out for that kind of work.”

Louise started crying again.  “I’m starting to think we always have been.”

Brainless Bailey groaned, rolled over, and said, “Wrong.  I’m still dead.  You can’t kill what’s dead!” 

Off in the distance, a scrambled voice yelled: “FORGOTTEN SOMEONE?”

The cat stuck his nose into the air and breathed deeply.  “I smell something stinky.  That must be Orfeo’s head!”

 

“Let’s make a deal.”  Perched on one of the few nearby gravestones Peter didn’t destroy in his tantrum, it had been hard to imagine the decapitated head looking worse but now its left side was caved in from the angel’s angry backhand.  On top of the steady rot - and the fact that he wasn’t a work of art to begin with - it was getting hard to focus on anything Orfeo said without staring at his simple, old-fashioned ugliness.  The bizarre, disembodied voice didn’t help either, but he kept negotiating like everything was perfectly normal. “You need to get to Purgatory and I need a new body.  We’ve got a win-win here.”

Holding up a paw to stop the head from talking, Twitch asked:  “Before we get into this, I’d like to know something: How are you even talking?”

“Really?  A talking cat that’s actually a soul who should be in Heaven but is wandering through Hell trying to rescue a teenage girl wants to know how a spell-casting demon head can talk?  Do we have time to get into this?”

Bailey, who had taken to passing time by poking around the hollowness of her open skull and examining her fingers after when they were idle, laughed.  “He’s got a point.”

  The head focused his burning red eyes on Louise.  “Anyway, I don’t think I have eternity in this state so let’s move.  Do we have a deal?”  He didn’t wait for an answer.  “There’s a Fleshcrafting Spell on page 256 of your book.  Stick my head on Azul’s body, say the spell, I’m fixed up and fly you to Purgatory, we say goodbye and say we’ll miss each other.  Then I go back and wipe out that so-called Lilith out.  Like that’s her real name, every female Demon in Hell claims they’re Lilith.”

“Let’s stick to the subject,” Louise said, walking around him and thumbing through the book.  “Hmm, Dali, Salvador; Darkfriends, Dashing through Lava, okay, here: Deal making.  Use extreme caution when making deals in Hell, especially with Demons.  So let’s make a deal, Orfeo.  We put your head on that stinky body over there, and you fly us to Purgatory, but you can’t eat us, kill us, take us prisoners, mess with us at all, plus you have to keep us completely safe.  Forever.  All three of us.”

If Orfeo had any shoulders to shrug, he would have shrugged them.  “What are you getting at, girl?”

“You can’t f**k with us in any way.  A deal’s a deal.”

Twitch perked up.  “And, Orfeo.  If for some reason we can’t get Bailey out of Hell, you have to protect her.  Forever.”

The demon head clacked his teeth together three times again and sighed.  “Ah, for God’s sake.  Fine.  We’re running out of time here.  I agree.  To everything.”

Bailey held Orfeo’s head by the horns onto Azul’s neck and Louise chanted “Caput Andras est Sanum, et Integrum Numquam Iterum Solveris!” three times.  The body convulsed and pulled the head onto it, making a huge sucking sound like a drain pulling down a tub full of water after it’s been stopped up for a week.

 

A storm of dirt kicked up in the wake of him trying out his new wings, standing in place and flapping them hard a few times.  Orfeo swiveled his head on its new neck and glared furiously.   “Let’s get this over with.  We’ll be there in an hour.”  He pulled them tight against the muscular, hairy chest and took to the air. 

Bailey cried out when they passed over a group of Lost Souls running through the now familiar landscape of fire and brimstone, fleeing a group of monsters chasing them with whips.  They ran into a small forest of those dead trees, only to have the trees grab them and start pulling them apart.  Louise reached out and grabbed her hand.  “We’re getting you out of here,” she whispered.  “You don’t belong here.”

“Good luck with that,” Orfeo boomed, laughing.  “Haven’t met anybody yet who deserved to be here.  And never met anybody who got out.”

“But you’re going to look out for her if we can’t, so there’s no problem,” Twitch yelled over the winds. 

 

They landed soft as a kitten’s kiss about a football field away outside of Purgatory, a beautiful, giant island choked with wild growths of trees and plants, all surrounded by a giant moat of boiling lava.  “How’s that place so beautiful,” Twitch asked Orfeo, “And everything out here so horrible, dead trees everywhere, no life?”

“Environmental disaster.  Original Sin,” he answered.  “This whole place was beautiful, they say.  I don’t know, I wasn’t around then.”

Louise took off her backpack and stretched.  “Orfeo, I’m gonna give you back everything except the Little Red Book.  I don’t think going to God and angels for help with a demon’s rat fur backpack and machete are going to help me much, and...” 

She whipped the machete out and lopped the demon’s head off in one clean hit.  Orfeo’s head slid off and hit the ground.  His new body quivered for a second and collapsed to the ground with a huge thump.

“Holy crap!”  Bailey laughed out loud.  “What the hell, Louise!”

“What, you trusted a demon to make good on a deal?  He was gonna screw us somehow, I just knew it.”

The demon’s head whispered, “God Damn you all.  I cannot get a break.”

“Let’s go,” Louise said.

“I think you need to get your soul, me, back inside you,” Twitch told Louise.  “That was a completely unpredictable act of violence.  You seem to be slipping, maybe getting affected by your surroundings.  You agree?”

“Not really,” Louise told him.  “Like I said, I just don’t trust demons.  Or angels, for that matter.”

 

“Look, those angels are exactly like the ones that took Peter after he kicked Azul’s head in back at the cornfield,” Louise told them when they got within sight of the gate. 

Two angels standing guard at Purgatory’s gate looked up, smiled and waved at the approaching travelers, but when they got about twenty feet away both yelled, “FREEZE!”  Their voices were so deep and loud Louise felt her bones rattle. 

“I have to see God!  I was supposed to be in Heaven but escaped,” Louise yelled, arms up in surrender.  Bailey held her arms up too, and Twitch froze in place.

Louise started talking very loud and fast:  “I’m supposed to be in Heaven, you can check my ID card, here.”  Louise pulled the plastic ID card from Heaven out of a pocket.  “But I had to come down here for my friend.  There’s been a mistake, I just know it.”

The angels nodded.  “OKAY, BUT RIGHT NOW BUDDHA PRESIDES.  COME BACK IN TWO HUNDRED AND FORTY EIGHT YEARS, WHEN YAHWEH WILL PRESIDE AND HEAR CASES.  GATE SIX.  WE’LL REMEMBER YOU.”

Bailey ran at them screaming “Two hundred and forty-eight years!  I can’t wait that long.  These damn things in here are fixing to have their way with me!  Have you seen what they do to people in this place!”

The angels raised their hands and lightning began to form.  “BACK AWAY, LOST SOUL.  WE DIDN’T SAY ANYTHING ABOUT YOU.  GOD’S WILL CANNOT BE ALTERED UNDER ANY CIRCUMSTANCES.”

Louise dashed up and pulled Brainless Bailey away from them.   “Come with me, we’ll come back, I’ll keep you safe, God will help us I just know it!”

“I’m not spending two hundred and forty eight years running away from a bunch of monsters trying to keep from getting ripped up or raped, d****t!  You cut the head off my Guardian Demon, Louise!  What am I supposed to do?” 

“Come on, let’s just go back, sit down and figure out what to do,” Twitch said. 

They went back to the spot where they landed with Orfeo.  The demon’s head chuckled as they shuffled over.  “Didn’t go too well?  Karma’s tough, right?”

“Shut up,” Twitch told him.

“I’m sorry, Orfeo,” Louise told the head.  “I just never heard of a deal with a demon working out.”

The demon’s head growled.  “Anything I can do to get you to change your mind?  Nothing personal, Bailey.  About the mind, I mean.  Anything I can say to get you to put me back on Azul’s body?  It’s a great body, super strong.  I’ll agree to anything.”

“Maybe, demon,” Twitch said.  “Listen.  Is there anything at all we can do to get Bailey out of Hell?  Anything?  Everybody keeps going on about God’s will; maybe God’s will is serious business.  Is there anything?  Tell the truth.”

“Cat, I’m telling you the truth.  There isn’t a hope in Hell.  Your best bet is put me back together and let me look out for her.”

Twitch padded directly in front of Orfeo’s head and sat down.  “Has anything like that ever worked out?  Can a demon really look out for a lost soul, does Hell work that way at all?”  Orfeo simply shut his red eyes and didn’t answer.

Bailey sobbed and collapsed into Louise’s arms.  Louise kicked at Twitch.  “Why’d you have to ask that where she could hear it, stupid!” 

She grabbed the machete, pushed Bailey aside, screamed and chopped Orfeo’s head in half.  “Maybe that’ll shut you up for good!”  It did.

Later, the cat curled up in between the two girls.  “I have an idea.  You know, maybe Orfeo had a good idea after all.  We just weren’t looking at it the right way.”

 

“Just trust me, baby,” Louise said.  “Close your eyes.”  Louise closed her eyes and brought the machete down on Bailey’s neck, severing what was left of her best friend’s head from her busted-up body.  Louise grabbed the head and shoved it onto the demon Azul’s body, the strong winged body Orfeo’s had wanted to be re-attached to so badly before Louise split it in half. 

Louise held Bailey’s quivering, severed head on the demon’s neck and yelled, “Go Twitch, now!”

Twitch read the Fleshcrafting spell they’d used on Orfeo’s head back in the Cornfields, and when he finished they both held their breath and waited for Bailey to say something. 

Silence.

“I don’t know,” Twitch said.  “Maybe a human soul can’t be bound to a demon body.  This was a huge risk.”

“Shut up, stupid,” Louise the Damned said.  I’ll never leave this place if it don’t work, so you better hope it does.”

Silence.  Louise shook the new, strange hybrid.  “Come on, Bailey, come on!  This has to work!”

But Azul’s body and Bailey’s head, now bound together, slumped to the ground. 

Twitch ran beside the ruined body and Louise fell to her knees sobbing.  “Oh God no, Twitch, I actually did murder my best friend.”  Looking up at the black sky, she prayed.  “I don’t know if you listen from down here, God but if there’s anything…”

Bailey’s eyes popped open.  “Psyche.  Gotcha, fools.”  She stood up, unfolded her new demon wings and stretched her big new demon arms out.  “Man, you should have seen the expression on your face!  I totally got you!”

“D****t, Bailey!  B***h!  I could kill you,” Louise screamed, jumped up, and hugged her new demon best friend.

“That’s for texting and driving.  I was telling you to stop,” Bailey said.

“Got me,” Louise answered.  “You got me.  B***h.”

 

They sat around talking for a few hours, reliving old times back on Earth, but found details were fading - especially Bailey’s.  “It’s hard to explain what this feels like,” she said, “but the power is awesome, like being able to drink a volcano through a straw.”  Bailey scratched Twitch on the head.  “I could throw you five miles, you know.”

 The cat ducked his head away.  “I think its time for me to let you two say your goodbyes, but Louise, then I have another idea.  Those angels said Buddha presides, right?  Tell them you want to convert.  Say you’re a Buddhist.  Then he’ll hear your case.”

Bailey the Demon clacked her new fangs together.  “Do Buddhists have souls?”

Twitch walked away swishing his black cattail.  “That one’s about to.”

Louise stared up at her Brainless Best Friend’s head on the terrifying demon body with its black, leathery wings and clawed hands.  “This is a little surreal, you know.  You were always so beautiful and perfect; I was the scary Goth girl.  Now look at you.  What would your parents say?”

 “Seriously,” Bailey answered and breathed in so deeply in felt like she would suck Louise into her new lungs.  “Guess I’m sort of gender-neutral too.  You think I should go try and fight that Lilith chick Orfeo was always whining about?”

“Not yet,” Louise said.  “I didn’t go through this so you could get beheaded again.”  Louise the Sad looked away at distant mountains of fire.

“How can I say goodbye to you, Bailey?  This is a real goodbye, I think.  Like a forever goodbye.  I don’t remember you not being there.  Nursery school.  Second grade.  Sharing your lunch with me when my white trash Mom didn’t have nothing at the house.  Letting me sleep at your house.  Getting your Daddy to pay our bills when you didn’t think I knew.  You’ve always been there for me and I don’t know how I’m supposed to get by without you backing me up.  And Bailey, I’m so sorry about…”

Bailey the new Demon Girl held Louise by the shoulders.  “Forget about it, Louise.  We’re even, not that you did anything wrong.  One thing I do remember is that I was drunk so you drove.  It was my car, not yours.  Remember?”

“Wait.  We were drinking?”

“I was, Louise.  You were sober,” Bailey said.  “I actually just remembered.  So I’m sorry for giving you a hard time about texting.  If I hadn’t been drinking, you wouldn’t have had to drive, and who knows what would’ve happened.”

Louise shook her head and shrugged.  “None of that matters.  I just don’t know what I’m gonna do with Bailey.  I can’t imagine a world without my best friend in it.  I don’t care if it is Heaven.”

“You’re pretty tough, Louise.  You’ll do fine.  I’m gonna kick a*s down here.  Plus you got that book, just look up Conjuring.  If you get back to Earth or Heaven, who knows?  Maybe you can call me up sometime.  Love you, Louise.  Now get out of Hell.”

Bailey lifted off and flew away.  “Love you too, girl,” Louise said, watching the demon disappear into the night.  “Careful out there.”

 

Twitch and Louise took time to strategize, then they approached Gate Six of Purgatory.  “Listen,” Louise said, Twitch strutting behind her.  “I’ve had enough of all you damn angels, Jesus, Heaven, the whole thing.  I want to talk to Buddha.  I’m converting to Buddhism.  Take me in to see Buddha.  Right now.”

 

They entered a bamboo forest that lead to a sunlit clearing where Buddha sat on a simple gold pillow.  A man and a woman in white robes sat on either side of him. Louise sat Twitch on the ground, and the cat said, “I thought Buddha was going to be fat, like in all the pictures.”

“Welcome, Louise the Damned,” the two monks said in unison.  “You want to go home.  Nirvana wasn’t good enough?  Heaven?  The afterlife?”

She felt like crying, but swallowed back the tears.  She couldn’t answer.  Finally Twitch said, “Isn’t Buddha supposed to be the one talking?”

Both laughed at once.  “Siddhartha can’t answer you.  He is empty, without desire or thought.  There is nothing for him to say.  What do you want to know?”

Twitch asked “How can she be reincarnated?  So she can go back to Canaan Falls?”

“Easy,” they said.  “Run, jump into the lava that flows around this island, where the Monsters will devour you.  You will be reborn.  Idiot.  Asking Siddhartha something so simple, it’s like flying to Paris for a glass of water.”

Finally Louise stepped towards them “Buddha, you’re saying I go jump into that big pool of fire around this island and let those monsters eat me, and I’m home?”  Buddha stared into space, expressionless.  “You’re saying that’s all I got to do?”

“We told you already, he doesn’t speak,” a monk said.  “He’s empty, completely enlightened, no striving, no thinking, so what’s there to say?  We don’t even think he hears us.”

“So get on with it, or leave.  It’s up to you,” the other monk told her.  “Your karma has lead you right up here, right now, this exact second.  It was meant to be.  You are now aware.  Now you know.  The rest is up to you.  Jump, don’t jump, stay, don’t stay, Hell, Heaven, whatever.  You can go anywhere you want, be anyone you want to be.  It’s always been that way, but now you have the courage to see it.  So what do you want?”

Louise the Damned sat down.  Twitch climbed into her lap, and she stroked his deep, soft black fur.  She closed her eyes, listening to her own breath and the sound of the cat purring.   Hours later, she opened her eyes and said:  “Come on, Twitch.  There’s no place like home.”

They ran through the sunlit clearing, both screaming, “There’s no place like home, there’s no place like home, there’s no place like home!” 

Be anyone you want to be.  When she’d been alive, Louise and her Mom were always broke.  Their rusty car always was always breaking down.  The girls at school always made fun of her clothes.  Then her Mom went off the rails and her only friend in the world was Bailey, and now she was gone.  Whatever she had, it was never good enough. 

Be anyone you want to be.  Yes, she wanted the biggest house in town and the most money.  You can be enlightened and rich.  Louise Parker was tired of being second best.

They burst into the bamboo forest.  Bashing into thick green stalks, laughing and yelling, both of them chanting “There’s no place like home, there’s no place like home, there’s no place like home!” they ran towards the moat of fire surrounding Purgatory.

Louise the Damned and Twitch the Soul Cat came to the edge of Purgatory and froze.  A molten river of fire stretched out before them.  Amermaits, bizarre half hippo and alligator creatures from before time, leapt from the fire into the air in graceful, ballet-like movements that didn’t make sense for something bigger than a school bus, snapping and growling.

“I’m scared, Lou,” Twitch said.

“Me too,” she told him, “But this also might be a dream.”

“I don’t think it’s a dream,” the cat said.  “Pick me up.”

And they fell into the fire, both reassuring each other: “There’s no place like home.”

 

 

Author's Note

Thank you for your honest feedback!

Reviews

[Yang Monster]

That was really good! I want to read more. Although it was a bit confusing at first I like over all story!

[Brooke Graco]

What an interesting concept! Very intriguing with they way you have described both heaven and hell. And I didn't see the ending coming either. Great job :)