This is the first question that crosses Clie’s mind as she awakens, and she’s not entirely sure why.

She stands on her quivering feet and throws a stare through the locomotive window. A vast view of some otherworldly sky encompasses the train, with small islands scattered about that seem to hover in the air. A cold draft rushes into the carriage, sending a shiver through her body.

Recalling the newspaper, Clie tentatively makes her way across the locomotive and exits the car, stepping into the air of this strange new world. It’s very cold, she notices. Very, very cold. She enters another carriage, which seems to have only barely survived the inter-dimensional swerve; the glass windows are shattered, a chunk of the floor is completely gone, and a light bulb had fallen from the ceiling. Not wanting to be wasteful, she places the light bulb in her pocket and moves on to the next carriage. Eventually, she returns to the carriage where her friend, Kevin, had disappeared, and where he left a lit cigarette and she the newspaper, still open on that peculiar article. Clie picks it up and reads it again:

 

LISTEN

When you make the turn, I ask of you to burn this paper. No matter who or what you meet next, tell them nothing of this. They do not appreciate me, for whatever reason. Thus, you are my only connection to this place. I will not guide you further than this, but I will keep an eye on you and do my best to reveal the light.

Now, I must confess that I have lied to you. You are not a logician—you are a mathematician. England and Scotland are long gone; I am unsure where you boarded this ride. But those matters are of lesser urgency. You must find Him, and convince Him to destroy the Ordinaryman. He will refuse. He will tell you that the universe does what it does. Do not listen to Him. He is blinded by his powers.

The fate of the world lies at your hands. Do what is right, Clie.

Best of luck. —Defectus

“Defectus…” she mutters, staring at that strange signature. “What kind of name is that? Is he a defect?”

Wow. In the whole history of the universe, in the entire existence of the very essence of time, no one—not a single living soul, human or otherwise—has ever made that joke before. It is very funny. I am going to laugh.

Clie returns to the top of the article.

When you make the turn, I ask of you to burn this paper. No matter who or what you meet next, tell them nothing of this.

She glances at the lit cigarette on the table. “Hmm,” she hmms. “That is rather convenient.” She picks up the cigarette and rubs its tip against the newspaper, which soon catches on fire and begins smoldering away. Conveniently, the paper is burning in a way such that the last words Clie can read from the article before it is completely lost are the dramatic and poignant

The fate of the world lies at your hands. Do what is right, Clie.

You may imagine a camera zooming in on this like it’s going to be very important later on, which it might be, I’m not sure. You see, this world that Clie sits in lies beyond my powers as a narrator. As such, I cannot dictate what happens here. The best I can do is present the facts from Clie’s point of view and add my own commentary, which I’m sure will be insightful, humorous and droll, and will definitely not get old after a while.

“You there!”

Clie looks up. A red, winged creature stands some distance away from the train, staring directly at her. It boasts a pair of caprine horns and wields a long silver trident. A number of similar creatures alight behind it, all holding threatening tridents. Clie takes a nervous step back.

“Walk out of the vehicle!” the same creature yells.

The incredibly human eyes are by far the most unsettling detail about these strange beings. Clie remains motionless.

They all collectively drop their tridents to the ground and unsheathe their Glock 17s, aiming directly at her. “Exit the vehicle immediately or we will open fire!”

Taken aback, she slides open the carriage door and steps outside onto the platform, raising her hands. The creatures exchange a few looks and murmurs, but keep their pistols steady.

“What is your business in the Shadow Realm?” a different one asks.

“Uh… I’m not really…” She recalls the newspaper article. “Oh! I need to see… er… ‘Him’?”

“What for?”

“I… can’t tell you.”

The creatures exchange more looks and murmurs. This seems rather unprofessional. “Who are your employers?”

“I can’t tell you that either. But, I can assure that it’s, uh, of highest importance.”

They finally return their pistols to their pockets and pick up their tridents. “Step forward, Clie Nt.”

Clie heaves a sigh of relief. She drops her arms to her sides and saunters towards the creatures. What a strange place I’ve been sent to, she thinks to herself, stopping a few feet away from them. Wait, how did they know my—

Unfortunately, that line of thought is interrupted by the sudden swing of a trident colliding directly with her skull. She staggers about, her vision blurred, and shortly thereafter collapses on the cold ground.

When she wakes up, some extended though finite amount of time later, her head is pounding, as if some massive creature had struck it with a trident. Her eyes open, but this reveals nothing. Before her lies bare and pitch black. And yet there is definitely something there, as she can feel it with the rest of her senses. E.g. she can:

• touch the ground
• smell the dust in the air
• hear her heartbeat
• taste the salt on the floor
• feel the pain in her head
• assess the temperature of the room
• estimate the passage of time
• gauge her acceleration
• propriocept the position of her fingers in relation to her legs

This is all well and good, but it is not sufficient to tell her the full layout of the room she resides in. Truly, sight is the ultimate sense in this regard.

She gets on her feet with a grunt and reaches forward in hopes of finding a wall. When this yields nothing, she begins walking around aimlessly, hoping to find something to touch. This room must be rather big, she realizes after a few minutes of zombiesque perambulation.

Eventually, she bumps into something. Curiously, it seems to move away from her.

“Hello?”

Clie jumps, taken aback by the sudden voice. It came from the object she collided with. “Uh… Hi,” she responds.

“Are you new here?”

“Yes. I think so, at least. Do you know where we are?”

“Hell,” the voice of another person, in a different place, resonates. “Surely this should be Hell, and we its doomed wanderers.”

“Uh…”

“Welcome, sister,” yet another voice echoes. “Welcome to your eternal residence.”

“Alright. Cool. Can somebody turn on the light?”

“There is no light in Hell,” another one speaks. “Not anymore. There used to be a light, long ago, in the ceiling, but it has since died, and now we are immortal.”

“Ah. That’s a shame. Well, does anyone have any food? I’m kinda hungry.”

“There is no food in Hell. Not anymore.”

“Wait, really? So what do you guys eat?”

“We do not eat in Hell. We do not need to; not anymore. So long as there is dark, our bodies might wither away, but our souls shall forever live on.”

“What?! I don’t want my body to wither away! That sounds awful! There must be another way!”

“If you can find the exit to Hell, you may leave to face off whatever lies beyond it.”

“But how can I find the exit if there’s no—ohhhhh…” Clie reaches into her pocket, and finds the beautifully convenient light bulb she grabbed earlier from the train. “Hey, did somebody say there used to be a light in the ceiling?”

“Yes, it was me.”

“Do you remember how high the ceiling was?”

“Er… I don’t know, 17 feet? It was pretty damn high.”

“Then we need 3 doomed souls, with an average height of 5’8”.” She hears some shuffling somewhere near her. “You need to climb on top of one another to form a stack. The bottom one must walk around the room; the top one must reach up and search for a light bulb.”

Some more shuffling is heard, followed by a few grunts, and the tower of doomed souls is presumably made. It sounds to have started moving around, in search of a light bulb.

“Come on, make another one!” Clie yells into the darkness. Another stack is made, and the search becomes faster. “Keep going! Make more stacks!”

Soon most of the room is grouped into stacks of three souls, each wandering about in search of the elusive bulb of light. Proud of her leadership, Clie grins and sits down on the dusty floor, awaiting the results.

“I found it!” someone yells behind her.

“Okay. Stay where you are. All the other stacks can break up. Now, I want you to say, ‘aaahh,’ like you’re at the dentist.”

“Alright. AAAAAAAAAAHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHH”

Clie searches for the sound’s origin, and after a while she finds the stack. “Okay, you can stop.” But the screaming doesn’t stop. It seems the doomed soul has been holding it in for an eternity.

Shortly afterwards, another soul joins its screaming, and then another one, and another one, and soon the entire room has broken into a chorus of horrible howls of anguish.

“CHANGE THE BULB!” Clie shouts, trying to push her light bulb into the bottom soul’s hands, but she can barely hear herself, and the souls don’t seem to be responsive anymore. Vexed, she scales the tower of doomed souls and finds a light bulb at the top. She unscrews it, drops it to the ground, and in its place screws the new light bulb from the train.

A bright glare flickers into life, and the screaming stops.

As Clie falls and lands on the ground, a rattling of bones fills the room. She opens her eyes and finds herself in a massive dark hall, lying in a tiny subsection that’s only dimly illuminated by that single light. The doomed souls around her are gone—in their place lie only mounds of human bones.

It seems to her that the doomed souls had been nought but skeletons for a long time now, but since no one could observe them in that darkness, their mortal state never updated, until now. How droll.

Directly below the light, an air vent is now revealed. Clie punches through it, and it shatters. Interestingly, though one of the doomed souls recalled the light once working, he nonetheless never bothered to check the vent underneath it, or perhaps didn’t dare go through it.

What, then, must lie beyond it?