Chapter 1.5: Vestibule of Hell

"So, wait. Your brother is the angel of death, " Savannah asked.

"Yeah, I didn't stutter, you hard of hearing? I can repeat if you are, I don't mind," Santos replied.

Savannah reminded herself that the crazy man was the only thing separating her from being captured by something far worse than him.

"After I went through the Gate of Immorality, I was at a train station, and then I traded tickets with this nerdy guy," Santos grumbled.

"Tickets? They have tickets in Hell?"

"Yeah, mine went straight to the center, his ticket went to Limbo, so we traded."

Savannah was stupefied. He told her he was trying to get past the center, but he gave up his ticket so easily! "Why would you trade if you're trying to get past the center," Savannah asked.

"I wanted to find some people and take them with me," Santos explained. " It's also an obvious trap! I know someone who's in here who shouldn't. I've met children here that shouldn't. "

"Wait. Why would someone want to go to the center of Hell , " Savannah asked.

Santos shrugged.

"Aren't you worried! What if something happens to him," Savannah shouted.

"That is not my problem, and besides he seemed pretty okay about it."

"Did he now," Savannah asked.

"Yeah. Just listen and I'll tell you," Santos scoffed. "Children these days. So impatient ."

Savannah held her tongue, as the man who appeared to be younger than her continued his tale of insanity and blood.

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Santos opened his eyes and was in a cavernous train station, the sounds of people's cries and misery bouncing off the walls, their wails permeating the air.

"Why the fuck am I at Grand Central Station?"

He thought it would be funny to make the sorting room for the damned souls look exactly the same as the Grand Central Terminal Train Station, in Manhattan, now underwater.

He also thought it was absolutely hilarious that so many of the souls from the same place knew they were in Hell the moment they set foot into the train station.

Santos was still wearing the same filthy clothes he had on when he had died, the black blood-stained pants, no shoes, no shirt, yet he was still going to get service. He looked down in his hand and saw a ticket he never remembered being given.

It was red and white, with a little star on it, and it said One Way Ticket to Hell, The Center.

Santos knew he had the wrong ticket. There was no way he should be sent to the center, to His throne, when he was supposed to go to the eighth, the seventh, or maybe even the third circle.

He didn't want the ticket anymore and decided to find a sucker that was willing to go in his steed. Santos walked down the marble floors, the sound of his feet smacking overpowered by the screams of people telling everyone that I'm a good person and I shouldn't be here.

Santos had to find someone that wanted to go to the center, and was stupid enough to believe his lies, and also had the ticket to the first circle, Limbo. The more he walked through Grand Central, he found it ironic that the entrance to Hell was cold, and that it was probably the first train station he had seen where the trains always came on time.

He stopped at a place called, The Oyster Bar.

The Oyster Bar was a repurposed section of Grand Central Station, with little yellow lights on the arches of the low hanging ceiling. The bar counter was decorated in the same color as the little brown tiles that made up the floor.

Booths and tables surrounded the bar area, with a bartender that had one large protruding horn on the top of his head, and no eyes. Somehow he was able to deftly make drinks as the bar patrons ordered strange concoctions, monsters, and humans alike.

Souls that refused to pass on drank at the bar, possibly the only bar in existence that never said, ' You Don't Have To Go Home, But You Can't Stay Here.'

Santos scanned the bar patrons for an easy target.

Like a snake, he slithered inside and smelled the air. Santos could smell their fear, not from him, but from facing the consequences of their actions. The strangest smell of all came from a bespeckled man in the corner booth, nursing a dry martini and writing notes on a torn napkin.

His glasses' frame was too big for his head, so he kept pushing it up with one hand, stopped to take a sip from his drink, and then moved his fingers back, all while still writing with the other hand, never stopping.

Santos put on his smile, alluring and bold.

He was a predator and now he found his meal.

Santos walked over to the booth where the man was sitting, and smiled down at him, trying not to be scary, which was hard, covered in blood. The man looked up at him and wasn't afraid. He had seen so many come through, covered in blood, missing limbs at the station.

"Hey," Santos said.

"Good evening."

Santos sat across from him at the booth without asking, and tried to wriggle his way into the man's mind, by proving that we're just alike!

"Nice to meet you, my name's Santos Dominus."

The man let out a soft chuckle, at his declaration.

"Your name is Master of Saints? "

"Why not? It's a pretty cool name, I bet you can't beat that," Santos sneered.

"I cannot," he chuckled. "My name is Albert Whit. I'm a professor, I mean, I used to be a professor of religious philosophy."

Santos tried not to get too excited knowing that he had caught his meal.

"Hey, so uh, you got a ticket? Same as this?"

Santos flashed his red and white ticket, and Dr. Whit grinned, he finally getting what he had waited for, all along. A ticket straight to meet Him. It was what Dr.Whit had been waiting roughly four hundred years for.

"What did you do to get such a thing, Mr. Saint," Dr. Whit asked.

"Please. Don't. Call me Santos," he replied, acting pompous and faking humility.

"I've never met anyone with a ticket that goes to the center, what did you do?" Dr.Whit took another sip of his drink, and wiped the sweat off of his forehead, excited that he would finally get the answer he had always wanted.

"The idiot downstairs has a hard-on for me," Santos groaned. "Pretty sure he can't move on, gross." Santos took a drink of Dr.Whit's martini, and Dr.Whit balked as he drank it all, unprompted and shameless.

Santos knew that Dr.Whit wanted something, and to get it he would have to barter something. Santos wanted to see how much he could bother him, how far he could force Dr.Whit to prostrate himself to get what he wanted.

Dr. Whit pretended that it never happened.

"You talk as if you two were uh, committed together, " Dr.Whit said.

"Fuck no! He's my brother, don't be gross!"

Dr.Whit cocked his head to the side and rubbed his thumbs against his fingers. By the look on his face, Santos had found someone that had finally believed him when he spoke the truth, and it was not the reaction he wanted.

" Your brother is Him?"

"Yes, why do you care?"

"I… I want to meet Him. It would mean so much if-"

"You got a ticket to Limbo," Santos asked.

Dr.Whit did, but now he didn't want to give it up. What did Santos know that he didn't? Dr.Whit wasn't very good at hiding his emotions, and Santos knew that he had a ticket to Limbo, and would get it at any cost.

"Let's make a trade," Santos said. "You can have mine, I can have yours."

"Why do you want to go to Limbo? There's nothing there!"

"How do you know if you've never been there?"

Dr.Whit didn't have many options. He could wait another four hundred years, or maybe an eternity to get the answer he wanted, and another choice would never come again.

So he traded his ticket with Santos, and his hands shook as he got the ticket to the question to the answer he always wanted to know.

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"Wait. So he wanted to ask questions? He risked his life just to answer a few questions," Savannah shouted.

"Yeah, some people got convictions, Savannah. I can respect that," Santos replied.

Savannah crossed her arms and shivered as they walked faster, trying to get somewhere, but the longer they walked the more defeated she became. Nothing had changed in the landscape.

Sensing her apprehension, Santos started to talk again. The silence was worse than the stories he would tell her, of exploding goblins, demons, and a philosopher in a business casual suit.

"After I got on the train, well, more like some asshole pushed me through the door , I woke up inside some dumb girl's room," Santos sighed. "Shit was wrong. Like, the more you noticed stuff was off, soon everything would tell you to stop. "

Savannah stopped walking, no need to continue anywhere, as it felt like they were going nowhere. The story seemed more interesting than walking towards nothing, anyway.

"How would they tell you to stop," Savannah mumbled.

"The walls could talk and shit. The posters on the wall in her room, with people's faces, screamed at me. So I stopped thinking about it. Then, I started to believe that I was the girl. That I went to some school. It was fucking weird!"

"Limbo was a school? That's silly," Savannah laughed.

"I'm serious. They put children in there. "

Savannah stopped laughing, seeing the grim look on his face. It couldn't be true. Why would anyone take a child and leave them in here? Children don't belong in cages, especially not Hell.

"Don't stop thinking about what's going on, or else they'll trap you in another mirage," Santos warned her.

"Like the school? That doesn't seem so bad…."

"School sucks. Seems pretty fitting to me. "

Savannah rolled her eyes as she had to sit through another story she assumed was heavily embellished to make him look good.