1st Day in Hell
Santos was inside a bedroom that looked like that of a teenage girl.
Posters of singers he didn't recognize, their giant smiles plastered all over their faces stared down at him from the ceiling. He stared too long, and they started to scowl back. Santos ran out of the room, down the hallway, afraid that maybe he made the wrong choice, and then stopped.
His clothes were different.
He was wearing a plaid blue pajama bottom and a white shirt, not the clothes he came with. Not only that, but his hair was different. It was longer, and then he started to notice that something else was wrong too.
"Where is my penis," he whispered.
He was a woman.
"He stole my penis," Santos screamed.
A door down the hallway swung wide open, and a girl that was wearing too much makeup and a school uniform glared at her, backpack slung over one arm. Her black ponytail swayed as she stomped down the hallway, and stopped right in front of Santos.
"Destiny, shut up, it's 7 AM, and I don't care that your boyfriend left you, for me."
"This is it," Santos asked. "This is Hell?"
"Stop being overdramatic, you can find a new dick anywhere."
The young girl stomped off, and Santos stared at her, and new facts started to pour into his mind.
My name is Destiny, and my sister's name is Dawn, and today is Monday. I have chemistry for the first period and-
Santos sucked in a sharp breath and looked around, trying to stay present. None of it was real. He reluctantly returned to the first room he was in and tried not to stare at the posters on the ceiling.
He could hear their mumbles and whispers, their hot glares searing his back.
Everything is fine, they mumbled. Nothing is wrong.
Nothing was off. Everything was fine. So he decided to go along with whatever strange torture he was supposed to suffer. He got dressed and took a look at his new body in the mirror.
Nothing had changed except gender and height, he was smaller, hair longer, and Santos giggled in the mirror as he squeezed his chest, thinking that it wasn't so bad, that he could stay there forever.
I need to get to the bus or else I'll be late, and I can't get written up again, I don't want detention.
Santos had forgotten that he was in Limbo to gain info about how he could break out Joshua, how he could find the gate to Paradise from Adamh, and now he was more concerned about his history test during the last period.
On the bus ride to school, he was angry.
Santos, no, Destiny watched as her sister, Dawn, kissed her ex-boyfriend, Terrence, and they talked about all the things they were going to do during the weekend. She knew Dawn was doing it on purpose, kissing him more than necessary to show off that he was now hers.
Destiny turned to look out the window and watched the cars pass by, hoping that school wouldn't be as bad as it was last week. She put her headphones on so she wouldn't have to hear her sister loudly announce that she had gotten early admission and that she was going to become the best lawyer there was.
Destiny arrived at school and ran out of the bus. She wasn't in a rush to get to class, she had time, but everyone else on the bus seemed to be in a rush to get somewhere, and everyone at the entrance seemed to be going somewhere.
Like honey bees, they bobbed up and down the checkered green and white hallways, quieter than usual since they all had to wake up at 6 AM, and the teachers tried to stay awake with their double shot espresso macchiatos, to no avail.
On her way to the first period, Destiny decided to say hi to her favorite teacher before she saw him during her last period, history. She briskly walked down the hallway, clutching her black backpack straps, deftly weaving through the people in the halls, and stopped at the right room.
Room H-311.
She opened the door, and her favorite teacher was inside.
Destiny was about to tell him good morning when, suddenly, everything seemed off. She clutched the door handle, and looked around the room, and remembered that she didn't go to school there.
She wasn't fifteen, her name wasn't Destiny, and that this was Hell.
Santos gripped the doorknob tighter and tried to find the right words, staring at the skinny history teacher who sat at his desk. He pushed his owl-rimmed glasses up and scratched his bald head as he approached him.
"Destiny, good morning," he said.
Santos decided to just address the elephant in the room.
"Why are you in Hell? Aren't you Gandhi?"
Mr. Gandhi quickly shut the door behind them, and made a shushing noise, looking around frantically. "Don't say anything," he whispered. "They'll find us!"
"I don't give a fuck! Why are you in Hell? Didn't you liberate India? What the fuck is the high bar that someone has to pass to not end up in here?!?"
"Ah, I'm so glad you're a fan, but I insist-"
"You're coming with me," Santos said.
Mr.Gandhi shook his head rapidly and was fine where he was. It was nice, staying at this school, pretending with everyone else. He realized long ago that where they were wasn't normal, nor natural, but never complained.
It could be worse.
"Look. I know I deserve to be here. I know you don't . So let's go ," Santos pleaded.
"It's worse the further down you go," Mr.Gandhi said. "It must be. I've seen things. Let's not talk about it before they hear us."
Mr.Gandhi adjusted his tie and red dress shirt and tried to talk Santos down out of doing anything rash. He told him that the more he noticed things weren't right, the worse it got, that it was best to just play along.
Mr.Gandhi stopped explaining when he saw Santos start to smile.
"This is no different than home," Santos said. "There's nothing to be afraid of. I play pretend with my kids all the damn time."
Mr.Gandhi was concerned as to how a fifteen-year-old girl could have multiple children but chalked it up to the problems of modern youth. He was pushed aside as Santos moved towards him, and opened the door.
He was going to play along until he found what he needed.
It was lunch, and Santos sat alone. Out of curiosity, he bought food to see if he could eat it. He could, but it didn't taste like anything, so he threw out the small bag of gummy bears he ate and was disappointed.
With the illusion gone, everything seemed bland, not scary. He couldn't understand what Mr.Gandhi was so terrified of. It was a normal private school. The students had their groups of friends, their classes, and clubs.
Santos walked around the halls during the rest of lunch trying to find any clues, but he couldn't find any. All the classroom doors he opened were normal classrooms on the inside. There were no secret doors hidden in bathrooms, no hidden entrances behind bookcases in the library.
If it was possible to be tortured for eternity by boredom, Hell was doing a great job.
During the last half of lunch, everyone was outside in the courtyard. The younger kids were playing games, chasing after each other, and laughing, and the older ones sat at the outdoor tables, gossiping and playing games on their phones.
Santos realized that most of the people he had seen so far were children.
And then it dawned on him that they were all in Hell.
Children .
It made him uncomfortable, the more he thought about it. What crimes had these children committed? Were they cannibals, or thieves? It couldn't be possible. He saw a child cry when someone refused to return his pencil, and a teacher had to solve the situation.
Santos sat on one of the swings and tried to reason why anyone would send a child to Hell. The more he thought, the more everything around him started to unravel. A horrid smell of rotting eggs permeated the air, and the sky outside turned dark.
No one noticed except for him, and Santos tried to make it all stop. He stopped thinking about the children, about the tasteless food and boring atmosphere, the fluorescent lights that seemed to change color for no reason.
Then everything snapped back into place, as it should have been, Mr.Gandhi's warning was true. The nasty smell turned to a light spring breeze, the sun, shiny and bright, the sky a light pale blue, with sparse, wispy clouds.
Santos didn't want to be stuck there with children for eternity, he didn't want all the children to be stuck there either. So he did the worst thing he could do.
He started to ask questions.
Santos went up to three girls who were playing hopscotch, and they giggled, happy that a big kid wanted to join.
"Hi, hi, my name is Melly, do you want to play," one of them asked.
"Yes! Just, I got a quick question for you, Melly, " Santos said.
"Mmm, yes?"
Santos had a hunch why all the children were there, and what they had in common with Mr.Gandhi. So he tried not to throw up as he asked a question he never thought he would ask someone in his life.
"Have you heard about our Lord and Savior, Jesus Christ?"
"Nope, who's that," Melly asked.
Santos laughed, knowing that they were all stuck in there, not out of an actual crime, but ignorance. They were all too young to be judged but knew nothing of religion, so here they were all corralled, made to go to school, every day like the last, keeping their minds busy.
One of the little girls looked at Santos and said something peculiar.
"You're going to get in trouble with the principal. You can't talk about stuff like that in here."
"He can kiss my ass, " Santos sneered.
All the girls let out a loud ooooooooh, and they ran away, not wanting to get caught with a bad seed. Santos snickered, but stopped, as everything shifted again.
All the children stopped what they were doing, and the sky turned grey. The smell of rotting eggs returned, and the sun seemed to shine so much brighter than it did before. The children all turned to look at him and started giggling.
Ooooh. He's in trouble. The principal is coming, and he's going to get expelled.
Santos's blood-stained pants were back, his body was back, and then Santos knew that he was in trouble. The principal came out. He wasn't happy.
It was Aristocles.