I do not know how I got here, but it has become clear that I need to leave at once.
       Although it is often said that I am a world traveller, this place is something I could not have dreamed of. Perhaps I should begin by describing it. I am sitting on a dark metal bench, about seven feet wide, on a barge. The barge is big enough for about sixty or seventy people, and it looks to be running at half-capacity. I’d wonder which ocean I were in if not for the fact that when I look out over the edge of the boat, the water—if you can call it water—is glassy-smooth and midnight-black. It does not make a sound as the barge moves through it. No waves, no sound, just an eerie silence. And I can smell smoke, a thick smoke, though from where it is hard to say.
        Stranger still, the barge appears to have no motor and no captain. Yet still it moves. The more I look around, the more I am convinced we are on some sort of alchemical floating device, not a barge really, but a large metal rectangle capable of self-propulsion. It is not something I have seen in my travels, but it is something I do very much look forward to writing about upon my return. If I return.
        As the barge moves forward through the soundless black water, a feeling begins to take hold in my stomach. A sinking, dark feeling, one that I cannot quite place. But there is no time now to think about feelings. I reign in my focus and look at my closer surroundings. There is nobody on the bench to my left, but there is a man, perhaps in his 40s, to my right. I decide I may as well ask if he knows where we are.
        “Wish I could say,” he says in reply, his voice coming out dull and dead-sounding, “but you know what?” He pauses for a moment, hesitant, and I nod my head in anticipation. “Well, I think I’ve been here before. I don’t know quite how to place it. I’d thought it was a dream. But, damn it, I recognize this place.”
        As he speaks, everyone on the boat turns to look at us, still silent. They are all ages, mostly older but a healthy mix, wearing all types of clothes: Dresses, nightgowns, and a couple of men near the front are wearing military gear, all camouflage. Dark circles paint great crescents underneath their eyes, their skin sags. I realize that I must look that way also, not that I have a mirror to check.
        I turn my attention back to the middle-aged man, unsettled but determined to get a clearer answer. “What makes you think you’ve been here before?”
        The man pauses and squints, as if trying to see something far off in the distance.
        “It happened a long time ago. I was maybe twenty years old at the time. My buddies and I were riding dirt bikes down in Arizona. Spring break. We didn’t go to Cabo like everyone else, we rode dirt bikes. That’s what we were like in those days, you know.” He trails off, looking more tired than ever, but I motion for him to continue. “At some point we get lost on the trails. They fork out like hell, going all over the place, and I lose track of ‘em. So I speed up, head up a hill, see if I can get a vantage point. But I didn’t see the cliff. I pitched off and that’s all I remember. Then I was here.”
        “But… you’ve been here all this time?” I am even more confused now than I was to begin with.
        “No, no, I left. I woke up in a hospital room in Phoenix, everyone crying, happy tears though once they found out I was OK. Doctors said it was a miracle. But here I am, back again. And this time I don’t remember how I got here.” He frowns, his face gaunt and stretched thin over his bones, black circles like craters beneath his eyes. Something about the way he frowns tells me that he will not be saying any more on the subject.
        So where am I? I have heard a man’s story and still know nothing. Perhaps less than nothing. I get up out of my seat, knees aching. Why are my knees aching? If you can say one thing for me, say that I’m in great shape. Then again, they do tell you that once you hit 30, everything changes. I try talking to a few more people on the boat: A woman with an elaborate white gown, one of the men wearing the camouflage uniform. But they do not say a word to me. I keep walking.
        A girl is sitting on the bench at the front of the boat, nine or ten years old at the most. She has long, tangled black hair and bright green eyes. As I sit down next to her, I notice that she’s holding a stuffed tiger. It’s worn around the ears. There is a sad look on her face, and the tiger’s.
        “Hi,” I say tentatively, not really expecting her to answer me.
        “Hi there.” Her voice is still dull, but brighter than that of the man.
        “How’d you get here?” I ask, not really expecting her to know.
        “I think we drove here.”
        “We?”
        “Well my dad was driving, mommy was in the car too. We were going to pick Jackson up from school.”
        “Where are your parents now, then?” I cast around the boat but see nobody who appears to recognize the little girl.
        “Mommy said she’d see me soon.”
        “That’s all she told you?”
        “She was crying. I don’t know why. Do you think I did something wrong?” Now she looks worried. Her lower lip begins to tremble.
        “I’m sure you did not.” I put a hand on her shoulder to comfort her, though I’m not sure what use comfort is in a place like this.
        “Oh, right!” the girl cheers up a little. “She told me I was going to be OK. That’s the last thing I remember she told me.” She is smiling now.
        “I hope she’s right,” I say. “I think you’re going to be OK, too.” But I do not believe it. I do not believe that any of us are going to be OK. I have never been a man of great religion, but the growing fear within my stomach is giving me second thoughts. Megan rests her little head on my arm and plays with the worn ears of her tiger as our barge cuts through the glassy mist.

***

Megan has been sleeping for a few hours. As far as I can tell, I haven’t closed my eyes once. The smell of the smoke is stronger now, suffocating. On the near horizon I can see a looming wall, black with twisted metal, wreathed in flame. I can hear screams in the distance from beyond the wall, faint at first but growing louder as we approach.
        The barge runs aground. There is a hooded man, at least seven feet tall, waiting for us on the rocky shore.
        It is at this moment I realize where we are. Megan coughs once, twice. The smile is gone from her face now.
        “When will I see mommy again?” she asks, “do you think she’s mad at me?”
        “No… no, I don’t think so. Just hold my hand tight.” She grabs my hand and we climb down from the edge of the barge, stepping in the thick filthy water at the edge of the shore. I can no longer see the others that were on the boat. Now it is just the two of us and her stuffed tiger and the smoke.
        The hooded figure on the shore has a face that is twisted, rotted, old. I can smell the stench as soon as Megan and I step off the barge. Death is something I have known more than I should have liked during my lifetime, and this thing reeks of it.
        “Where are we?” I ask the thing, but I already know. Which religion was it, then? Which gamble should I have taken? It seems not to matter now. I want to be scared. I have been far more frightened in far more peaceful places. But Megan’s hand in mine, her face and lower lip trembling and her stuffed tiger, do not allow me. I put on a brave face as we walk past the hooded figure toward the looming wall.
        The wall is made of writhing limbs.
        I try to shield Megan’s eyes but she pushes my hand away. She has this look on her face. Like she’s confused and sad and scared all at once. The smoke has made her face grey and dusty. A tear cuts a clear path from her eye down her cheek, rolls off her chin. Megan looks up to me, squeezing my hand so tight I think all the bones in my fingers might break.
        “Why am I here?”
        What does one say to a child with a question like this? Something deep inside me wants to let her go and to run. To jump in that wet filth behind us and attempt to swim back to wherever the barge came from. But I cannot. I never had children of my own, and in a moment like this, I wish I had—maybe I’d know what to say. But, well. I have always had a policy of honesty. They called me a straightforward man. And there is no reason that should change now, even with a child.
        “This is a place they call Hell,” I say. “Did your parents ever talk to you about Hell?”
        “Some of the people at school do, at recess. Jamie told me that I’m going to go there if I don’t pray every night.”
        “I don’t think that’s how it works, Megan,” I say, getting on one knee. But I don’t know. We are closer to the wall now and anything worth saying should probably be said soon. “It’s not your fault you’re here. And I know it’s scary and it smells bad and this guy probably doesn’t like it either,” I say, playing with the ears of her stuffed tiger, “but we’re here together.” I muster a smile but doubt it provides any solace.
        “What’s going to happen when we pass the wall?” Megan is looking at the gates, now opening to let a long line of corpses through. She does not know what is coming, and the feeling takes hold in the bottom of my stomach, and it twists, and it turns. It is a feeling, I realize, more frightening than my own fate. My chest tightens and squeezes, I catch my breath in my throat, my heart panics.
        “Come on,” I say, standing up and walking with Megan, hand-in-hand, towards the door. I have said all that I can. What does one say, to a child in Hell? How does one explain that the child was simply born to the wrong parents? Or in the wrong place? I push the thought away, into that pit in the bottom of my stomach, and it remains restless there.
        We reach the gates of writhing limbs. They are dripping blood. On the other side of the wall the screams are louder than ever now, agonizing, tearing at my ears. Somehow I doubt they break up the torture by age group.
        “I don’t like it here,” says Megan, really crying now, tears running rivers through the dust on her face. She’s dropped her tiger now, probably by accident. It lays there lifeless in the mud. She grabs my hand tighter.
        “Neither do I.” But I know everything is about to get much, much worse. And the two of us walk through the gates of Hell, hand in hand, both crying. We are dead, and I wish that means I could say it is over.
        But it has only just begun.