Chapter Text
The last picture, dark and blurry, sat crammed in between two pages of his favorite book. It was a photo from the cross-country trip Billy had taken with his family last year.
The negatives were long gone, but one grainy picture remained. It had been there for almost a hundred years, long forgotten, but well protected within the lines of verse.
Billy had died on July fourth.
When it happened, it much more of a bigger deal than he thought it would be. He was nineteen, impaled multiple times by a fucking monster only to die in his sobbing sister's arms.
But in the newspapers, it was nothing more than a freak accident. No-one knew how or why what happened happened, and just about everyone agreed it was strange, but there weren't any real answers supplied.
It was one of those awful things that no one expected and shouldn't have happened. It shouldn't have. He had done a lot of wrong in his short life, but maybe he didn't deserve to die.
People cried for him, sang for him, wished for things to have been different.
Billy was still dead. His ribs were broken, lungs were punctured, and his esophagus was filled with blood until he could no longer breathe. It wasn't short and it wasn't painless. But it didn't matter how he died.
It wasn’t a loss of life, persay- it was more of a transition. On to the next world, the new beyond.
The next world had started with a line. Hundreds of people waited in front of a single window. Surrounded by endless white walls and equally white floors, Billy had slowly made his way to the back.
Some people hugged their knees and sobbed. Some muttered and stared off into space. Some looked genuinely bored. One woman, a pretty brunette girl, had run up and down the line, frantically asking questions.
“Where am I?” She’d shrieked, hazel eyes wild with fear. “What happened?”
She had been met with shrugs and vacant stares. She was not the first, nor the last.
The line took ages. There was no way of telling time- it could’ve been a year or an hour. But when Billy had finally reached the window, he’d asked the question many screaming and terrified before him people had asked.
“Where am I?” He said to the woman behind the window, who had been busy typing something into an archaic computer system.
“You’re dead, honey.” She murmured, not looking up. “Billy Hargrove?”
He’d nodded, not sure what else to do.
“Hand,” she’d instructed, holding out her own. Once he’d placed it in hers, she turned it over, palm facing down, and stamped the back.
It was a triangle, tiny and solid black. Billy’d looked back up to ask where he was, or where to go, or what was next, but the window was gone. So was the line when he turned around.
Instead, he was in a small room. White walls and a white bed stared back at him. A bookshelf sat in the corner. Next to it was a small, black desk with a lamp.
“Hello?” He’d asked to the walls. No one answered.
He’d found out later- hours later- that the door was unlocked. Outside, there was a single potted plant next to his door. He touched the leaves, breathing in the stale air. They were plastic.
Fluorescents reflected off of white walls as he walked down the hallway, searching for another soul.
There was a common room about fifty doors and three turns down from him. When he went out of the hallway on the other side, there was an identical hundred doors and common room. He sat down in a puffy chair, mind overwhelmed.
Emotion had left his body. He wanted to feel anything- scared, excited, nervous, lost, angry- but all he felt was empty. As empty as the rooms around him.
As time passed, he saw other faces. None he’d recognized. Initially, he’d hoped he would reunite with lost family members and friends, but it was quickly apparent that that would never happen. He would never find them.
He could talk, but no one was interested. Once you talked about your life and death, there was nothing really left to speak about but the uncertainty that plagued every soul in the place.
Where were they? What was next? Was this hell?
It wasn’t really hell as much as it was boredom. The bookshelf had every book you could ever want, and endless paper appeared on the desk. He tried to keep himself entertained, but the endless walls and fluorescents shot daggers into any creativity he could have mustered.
It turned out the bed wasn’t for sleeping- it was so he could lay down and stare at the perfectly white ceiling.
He did a lot of that. There was no food to eat, no shit to shit. He probably could have had sex, but finding other people was the last thing he wanted to do. He just wanted to be alone. To think about the life he could have lived. He just sat and stared, not knowing how or when or if time passed.
After re-reading a random book for the third time, Billy decided to try to kill himself. He wasn’t sure if it was possible, because he was already dead, but he could definitely try.
He’d begun to try to fashion a length of paper into a noose when fresh air caught his nose. It was bright, sweet, warm, and it danced into his brain, lighting up parts that hadn’t been touched since he’d died.
It was coming from under the door. Slowly, trying not to scare the hope away, he crept towards the door. The air was intoxicating- better than any vodka he could have bought when alive.
Emotions sprung to his chest for the first time since he’d gotten in line. Dry pine smoke and bird cries flew in on the air, bringing promises of a forest.
Was he hallucinating? Was it a dream? Had he finally killed himself?
He touched the handle, fingers shaking. It was electrifying, the feelings that filled him. He felt alive again.
He opened the door to a forest, lit by softly flickering candles. Sobs echoed through the needles, carrying to his ears.
He saw his friends hugging one another. Saw Max silently sobbing into her hands, his Father staring drunkenly at the ground, and his Step-Mother, Susan, gently rubbing Max's back. Sitting on a table was a picture of him, smiling brightly with a surfboard at his side and an endless blue ocean behind him.
Billy had just walked into the anniversary of his death.
Being back in the real world filled him to the brim with long lost emotions.
Life danced within his eyes, as transparent as he was. He found out quickly that he couldn’t communicate or interact with anything- he could only watch.
And when he stared at his hands, he could see the fire-lit carpet of pine needles beneath him. He ached to speak to his mother (even though she wasn't to be found at the funeral...), to Max, to his friends, but even complete silence was better than the room.
Anything was better than the room, the four walls and the plastic plant guarding his door. Anything.
The worst thing in the world, even worse than the room, was having to return to it.
He felt the ground leave his feet as he was thrust back into the four walls, the life leaving his chest as quickly as it had come.
It felt like being socked in the stomach with the force of an entire lifetime. But worse, because he couldn’t cry about it. He couldn’t cry about anything.
Everything- the joy, sadness, nostalgia, content- left his body in a snap. He was left in the room again, with the hallway beyond the door.
He couldn’t even feel upset. He could just sit on the bed and wait.
He waited for another year, only living for the time that the forest would sneak in under his door.
Sometimes, he feared it would never come back, but there was nothing he could do. So he just waited. Re-reading books, walking the endless halls. There was something to look forwards to. He didn’t want to kill himself. He wanted to go back.
He continued going back for a decade, and then another. Slowly, the mourning of his death became smaller and less widespread as his parents died. His picture still existed in old family photos and friends’ diaries, but the memory of him slowly dropped existence.
Eventually, everyone he'd once known was death. Every year he went back it seemed another friend was gone.
Pictures kept getting lost or destroyed- thrown away by accident, or torn in broken picture frames.
Slowly, his descendants died, only to give way Max's great-great-grandson, Arthur, who had the last remaining picture of him.
It had been almost a hundred years since Billy had tried speaking with anyone connected to him. He’d never been able to find any of them within the long halls of the Place- but he seldom left his room, anyways.
The only time he stepped outside the door anymore was when he went back to earth, when he felt the grass beneath his feet and the sun in his hair.
Billy knew, from seeing his hallmates disappear, that when no pictures of him existed he’d never be allowed to go back to the real world. He’d also leave the Place, but no one knew what was in the Beyond.
Billy, when he could feel emotions, was terrified. The last picture of him sat in an ancient book of poetry, on a bookshelf in the attic of Arthur's house.
Max had kept the picture of Billy when he died, cried with it even when Billy had been gone fifty years. She had kept the book with her treasures, a ratty red book cover covered in dust. Almost no one had touched it since she'd died.
Arthur looked like Max. Skin full of freckles, head wild with red hair. The two even shared a similar smile.
Billy found himself following Arthur around when he could almost as much as he followed his own descendants, just to see how he lived his life.
Arthur was, unlike Max, incredibly forgetful. He’d leave his wallet on the counter or forget the dog was outside.
Watching Arthur was almost like watching his step-sister. Even though they were incredibly different, the two shared the same laugh and the same wit.
Then, one day, Arthur forgot to put out a candle when he went to bed.
He’d set them up for a date, but the boy he'd invited had stood him up.
Billy had wanted to comfort him, but he just sat on the couch and watched. After crying and eating almost an entire tub of ice cream, he’d blown out most of them and headed up to bed.
All except one.
One, hanging by the curtain, greedy flame licking at the fabric.
Billy stared at it. Watched as it grew, climbed up to the wall. There. It had to end there.
But it didn’t.
It grabbed the ceiling, expanding up and around the window. Billy glanced at the fire detector. Surely, it would go off?
It was silent. Another unlikely event. Billy was beginning to get nervous.
He tried to touch the fire, to stop it, but of course, his hands went straight through. He tried fanning the smoke to the detector. He grabbed for the phone, tried to shake Arthur awake.
Nothing was working.
Flames greedily ate up the living room and expanded to the upstairs, finally waking up Arthur.
Red hot pain suddenly lanced through his back, ripping a scream out of his mouth. He bucked as the pain forced its way into his mouth. It was similar to the pain he felt when that creature had impaled him.
His entire body felt like it was on fire, lines tracing and crossing over his skin. Billy arched his back, where the pain was concentrated, heat searing his skin. He screeched as if it would never end, because it felt like it never would.
It only got worse. His forehead erupted with slicing agony. Collapsing to the ground, he grabbed onto his blond curls as he screamed, wishing for death. But he was already dead? Dead twice? He was gone. Wishing it was over. Wishing he didn’t exist. Simply wishing.
As quickly as it had come, the pain left. He laid on the ground, softly gasping as his muscles unconstricted. Flinching at every sound, he waited for the agony to come back.
Minutes dripped by. It didn’t come back. He was sore, his body didn’t feel like his own. But he wasn’t being hurt.
Slowly, he stood. When he looked down at his hands, the black triangle had multiplied, spreading over his skin. His veins were black and pronounced over thick, corded muscle.
His tongue prodded his canine teeth, only to find they were long and sharp. Fangs. Billy had fangs. His fingers shook, fear pounding around his mind. He needed answers.
He tried to run his hands through his hair, but something stopped him. Big, bony horns curled out of his forehead. They were solid and sharp at the end, and he cut his finger as he ran it over.
A shard of glass on the floor caught his eye. He glanced at it slowly, scared at what he would see.
Dipping around the side of his back were wings, heavy and black. He reached back to feel them, wincing at the pain that started through his body. They felt leathery, cold.
Blood dripped to the floor from his cut finger.
By the door rested an iron pitchfork, tips covered in dried blood. He shuddered as he felt the very tips of his wings, now hyperaware, brush against the ground.
“Mr. Hargrove?” A voice called as the door creaked open.
Another demon, freakish and unworldly, stepped through the door. He was tall, powerful, with long black horns and a mane of thick, flowing hair.
A pencil rested behind his pointed ear, and he held a staff in his left hand.
Leaning against the stone wall, he looked Billy up and down.
“Where the fuck am I?” Billy asked, knowing full well what the answer was.
“Well, Mr. Hargrove,” the demon laughed, tapping a pencil against his equally pointy teeth.
“You’ve got a triangle on your hand. If you have a circle, you get to go up there,” he pointed to the ceiling, “and live in eternal peace.” He laughed, lip curling into a mocking snarl.
“Here, though, we are not brown nosers. We do not believe in total harmony. We wage war where we see fit, defend ourselves and those we love. We are honest about what we want. We have dignity, courage, and pride. “ The demon smiled, tossing his pitchfork to Billy. It glinted in the low light.
“Welcome to Hell.”