Trampling in the Land of Woe: Hellbound, #1

Waves of floundering bodies, naked and desperate, clawed at the ship’s unyielding sides as it crushed through their groaning and gurgling masses. Despite having a tall iron-riveted hull, the Bonny Sweetheart teetered sickeningly from side to side. An imposing ship, she stood thirty feet high from wave crest to main deck, with two paddlewheels grinding away at her sides. The bow lurched upward and forward in the black Sea of the Damned as her smoke stacks spewed into the starless sky above.

A ship of the ages, this magnificent ship-of-the-line boasted a pointed bow and elegant bulging sides, but as technology trickled down from the living world into the afterlife, she’d evolved and mutated into a steam-powered hulk with an armored hide, deck guns, and a red-iron ram at the front. Each of the Bonny Sweetheart’s owners had made their own modifications, and her spacious cargo holds now brimmed with Hell’s fire—her burning belly would power her steam engines for eternity.

Some of those floundering bodies around them clung to the wiring of the protective cage that housed the massive paddle wheels, but if any of the destitute wretches climbed too high from the water, the vigilant crew promptly gunned them down.

Hephaestion gripped the railing, white-knuckled, as he scanned the mewling sea of bodies for just the right one. He needed a specific body type for his plan to work—tall and massive in girth, approximately 20 stone in weight and perhaps seventeen hands in height. Man or woman would do, and other factors, such as skin tone and hair, meant nothing.

They’d been searching for three months, and had yet to yield anything but impatience and distaste among the Bonny Sweetheart’s crew. Whenever Hephaestion stood or walked near one of the sailors, he took care to stand straight and make eye contact, punctuating his passing presence with a firm nod.

The deck consistently bustled with sailors, each in their sleeveless leather tunics, clumped in teams and dangling long metal poles over the sides of the ship, poking at the surges of wailing and water-logged humans. The ship’s occupants remained focused and dedicated, but Hephaestion could tell from their sidelong glances that they’d rather be enjoying their afterlives than searching in the waters that lapped Hell’s shore.

The deck’s planking creaked behind him. I know, I know.... Hephaestion sighed over his shoulder. We’re here longer than I promised.

You don’t have to placate me, Ulfric chimed. Even on a ship in a turbulent sea of wailing damned, Ulfric still managed to be cheery. The man’s disposition glowed as brightly as his blond hair and braided blond beard. Leaning against the railing next to Hephaestion, the Viking’s presence provided comfort.

I don’t thank you nearly enough, Hephaestion confessed.

Not nearly.

How is the crew holding up?

"A few of them have been lost in this very ocean, and they remember vividly their long swim to shore with only Hell to look forward to. I asked a lot of those men and women specifically to return here to help. Their knowledge has been helpful, and they’ve muscled through the memory of being here just to help."

I didn’t know that. I’d never expect someone to come back here, but like I said—

They insisted. They knew the waters and they knew what to expect. Ulfric made a sweeping gesture with his open hand.

In the distance, Hephaestion could see endless cresting mounds of miserable, tangled bodies. Silent lightning strikes in the distance lit up the horizon, casting a spotlight on tormented humanity as far as the eye could see.

Some stay out here, you know, Ulfric said. Some try and avoid the current pulling them in because they suspect greater punishment awaits them.

Hephaestion silently searched for a retort, but Alex’s face came to his mind instead. "I won’t find peace until I find him," he said stonily to his large friend.

Don’t I know it. Ulfric straightened up to leave. The crew will do their part, regardless of their feelings on the matter. You asked me for this, so I asked them. You’ll have it.

I’m sorry., Hephaestion turned away from the rolling waves, steadying himself by grabbing the railing.

With his usual disarming grin, Ulfric looked back. The hell you are! You wouldn’t be doing this if you were sorry. You’re just obsessed.

Hephaestion couldn’t help but smirk back; that insuppressible grin of Ulfric’s could melt all negativity. Indeed, Ulfric had given him the very same smile when they first met.

Hephaestion had been clinging to jutting rocks as the raging currents of Purgatory pummeled him, nearly a thousand years ago. Up above him flickered Ulfric’s blond hair, dancing about like a lighthouse’s flaming beacon. The huge man was all grin and open hands, reaching down for Hephaestion to pluck him from the battering waters.

Gratitude. This was the first word that always came to mind when he thought of Ulfric. The man provided unyielding and unrelenting kindness. Still, Ulfric was right: Hephaestion had asked a lot of the crew, and a lot of Ulfric himself. It didn’t matter, though, because Hephaestion had committed to perhaps one of the greatest endeavors imaginable.

He planned to get beyond Minos.

He intended to descend into the Pit.

He would rescue Alexander the Great from Hell.

If days could be judged on a sunless sea of wailing dead, then surely many had passed. Within the guts of the Bonny Sweetheart, several hourglasses kept time, as well as a giant mechanical clock powered by the ships growling Hellfire furnace, but Hephaestion rarely descended below deck. He obsessively scanned the swells of bodies for his quarry, unwilling to leave the search solely in the hands of Ulfric’s crew.

Time meant little to most in the afterlife, but it meant nearly nothing to Hephaestion. He’d spent centuries on the rolling hills of the infinite mountain Purgatory, upon the other side of the underworld, serving Ulfric and aiding others. All those centuries had marched on at the same, unperceivable rate, and all the while Hephaestion pined for his heart’s core.

He permitted himself a moment of mental rest, and his eyes drifted closed, shielding him from the wailing cacophony and distant flashes of lightning. He sighed and thought of Alexander. Despite the hundreds of years, he could easily remember his youth.

Alex romped in the stables attached to his father’s palace, and flopped in the hay, laughing as he often did. Hephaestion was taller than his king-to-be, even then, but Alex was always the rambunctious one. The boys, still under Aristotle’s tutelage, sparred every afternoon with training swords and wooden shields. As they did before each round, they banged them together three times to indicate they were ready to fight, restraining their laughter while they whimsically stared at each other.

Training, roughhousing, and daring horse-jumps had filled their summer that year, and between lessons from their tutors, they often ran and hid in the stables.

Alex liked to pick fights. He now jabbed at Hephaestion, more a sharp slap than a punch, and would continue to do so until Hephaestion’s temper, as it always did, got the better of him. Alex could always manipulate his friend’s feverish fury.

Come on, lanky! Alex taunted between smacks. Girls like me better. Don’t matter how pretty you are.

"Hard not to like the heir better than the sidekick!" Hephaestion snapped back, his guard up as he bobbed and dodged his friend’s annoyances.

I might leave a girl for you, when we’re older. Alex grinned. Let you have kids. Bet they’ll be pretty, too.

Stop calling me pretty!

I’m sure some famous horse lords were pretty, Alex said while delivering an echoing, open-palmed smack across Hephaestion’s face.

Hephaestion, teeth clenched, flattened Alex. He landed a knuckle-first jab and heard Alex’s nose ‘pop’ as his dirty blond head snapped back.

Alex staggered on his heels for a moment, slumped backward into some hay, and stared at the wooden beams above. You broke my nose, he marveled, half stunned.

Hephaestion put his hands over his mouth in shocked shame. The prince, son of King Philip, had blood pouring down from his nose onto his lips as his green eyes gazed into the heavens beyond the roof of the stables. Fifteen-year-old Hephaestion felt certain he would never see the age of sixteen now.

You broke my nose! Alex screeched with pubescent delight. That’s perfect! Now I’ll look like a soldier!

What?

"Yeah! And even with a crooked nose, I’ll still get more girls than you!"

Hephaestion pounced on him, pinning Alex’s shoulders with his knees, and proceeded to set his prince’s nose back into proper place.

Stop! Alex protested while flailing. Quit it! I want it!

You’re being a jackass! Hephaestion snarled. "I won’t get the rod because you were a jackass. Let me at least.... Ow!" He leapt back as Alex nipped at his fingers like an ornery horse.

Alex grinned through red teeth. I get a broken nose, and you get a finger missing. We’ll both be warriors!

The boys collided and tumbled as they gnawed and kicked and bit in the dust. The horses snorted and stamped and tossed about while watching the spectacle. Hephaestion knew he would lose, but he honestly didn’t mind it.

Alex always wanted the fight more, wanted the victory more, and nothing pleased Alex more than winning.

But as Alexander bit down on Hephaestion’s ring finger, he did so without severing intent. Alex instead nibbled, and he soon pursed his lips and suckled on the end of Hephaestion’s finger.

A jolt shot down his spine, paralyzing Hephaestion with sensation. He gasped, face agape while he watched Alexander worship his entire hand with an eager mouth. Soon the two boys collapsed into each other, interested in far more than just fingers and noses, and the horses calmed.

Hephaestion smiled, eyes down, thoughts in a distant place. He would have his Alexander again. Alexander was his Earth, and his thoughts orbited him like the moon. He would hold him again, and his eternity of being incomplete would be over.

Ho! cried one of the crew, her raspy voice piercing the din. As soon as her cry hit the ears of her fellow crew, they each tossed their heads back and echoed the call.

Ulfric jumped back on deck within an instant, his eyes keen. Hepher! he hollered over all other voices. Someone speared a whale for you!

Hephaestion ran and arrived at the port stern just in time to see an enormous, pale man flopped onto the deck.

The man’s eyes were red from duress, and his hair had been torn from his head in clumps, ripped out by the fellow damned that drifted with him. The wheezing and frothing coming from his mouth and nose were a product of his endless gasping, his sudden exposure to solid ground, and the agony of having a barbed spear haul him in. Tall but thick-limbed, the man was so large that his fat moved almost like a separate entity from his skeleton. His body blobbed on the ship’s deck, rolling about with each swell, only given shape by his pallid skin. The spear lodged in his midsection, a jagged and clumsy-looking weapon, caused yellow fat and dark blood to pool in its quarry’s folds.

Hephaestion did the man a small mercy, and immediately drove a dagger deep into the back of his skull.

The man is perfect!

Hephaestion needed a human being large enough that he himself could fit inside, and that was a rarity among humanity.

We’ve got about two days before he revives, he said. If he heals up faster than that, just be at the ready with a knife.

The surrounding crew nodded, and Ulfric clapped his coarse hands twice. The crew responded by binding their new passenger with thick hauling rope. Several men grunted as they dragged him into the deck’s upper cabin.

A tinge of remorse hit Hephaestion, his shoulders and brow lowering involuntarily. It was an imperceptible and unconscious gesture, but nothing slipped past Ulfric.

See? Ulfric accused him when the others were out of earshot. "You feel like shit for that. I know you know this is an idiotic idea."

I was quick! Hephaestion protested. He won’t suffer unduly by my hands. We’ll gut him, I’ll get myself and my kit inside him, and when he heals up, he’ll be right back in the water.

"For you to then wait how many decades for him to wash in?"

You know the docks aren’t an option with my face. Someone will spot me before I even get off a boat. Damn it, stop trying to talk me out of this at the last minute!

While Ulfric had been amazingly supportive in this rescue operation, he’d challenged each of Hephaestion’s decisions long after he’d made them. For centuries, Ulfric had quietly, and sometimes loudly, urged Hephaestion to stow his longing for Alexander and simply focus on himself. A man should not be stuck in Purgatory for so many centuries, but when it eventually became clear that Hephaestion would not be moving on without Alexander, Ulfric ceded to help in the rescue. In Ulfric’s eyes, any direction was best for Hephaestion, regardless of ‘up’ or ‘down.’

Ulfric’s posture eased from argumentative to attentive. He remained silent, gently listening.

"He needs me, Ulf. And you know I need this. A part of me is down there... and this is the only way I can think of to do this. I’m done waiting. I’m done feeling broken."

Ulfric nodded his understanding, and then hugged Hephaestion tightly. All right, maybe I’m just being selfish. He clapped both his weathered hands on Hephaestion’s shoulders. Maybe I don’t want you to go, and maybe you have a totally different path than I’d hoped for you, but this Trojan horse of yours is a man—a man in there waiting to be gutted by—

A glutton, Ulf. The man is a glutton aimed for Hell, and I’m going to piggy-back on him to get down there. Just as I have my own path, he has his. Hephaestion gently pulled away. And you have yours.

Don’t define people by their sins, Hepher.

He put himself here, and I’m going to use his horrible choices in life to my ends, to rescue Alex. Yes, it’s cruel how I’m going to do it. I know. I do feel bad, all right? I do. But that man is a glutton and he earned a place down there.

Like Alexander earned his?

Hephaestion’s gaze lost all warmth, and he evaluated Ulfric coolly. Without a word, he turned on his heels, and prepared to set about his savage task of disemboweling the gluttonous man.

Keep him bound up tight at each limb and pull his arms and legs downward. It’ll stretch the torso a bit more, Hephaestion commanded his two assistants. The oil lamps above swung lazily from side to side with the ship, as he gave his gutting blade a last drag on the sharpening stone. The floor was grated to drain out blood and viscera, and Hephaestion hung up his tunic next to the other two already hanging there. As messy as things would get, Hephaestion thought it ideal that he and his assistants be naked for their work.

He paused for a moment and looked at the dead man’s blank gaze, his pupils unresponsive to the light dancing in the room. Most people, depending on the severity of their wound, remained dead only for a few days in the afterlife. For some, it was a brief respite in oblivion, a reprieve from suffering or sorrow. Often referred to as ‘afterdeath,’ Hephaestion had experienced it several times, and always by accident, either while training or rock climbing on the cliffs in Purgatory. Afterdeath was often preferable to dismemberment or severe bone breaks, because at least in afterdeath you were spared the pain of the injury, or worse still, the pain of healing.

He’d sold Ulfric on the idea of using a gluttonous hellbound soul to sneak into Hell.

Ulfric was against it at first, stating, We aren’t demons or torturers, Hepher. You’re asking something nasty.

Hephaestion kept at him, though, making the case that the initial pain would be minimal. It took many decades, but he wore Ulfric down.

Reminding himself that the person before him was just meat, Hephaestion cut into the glutton’s right side, near the lowest rib, with a ragged sigh. He drew a deep, bloody smile all the way across the lower belly, sawing through skin, fat, and tissue until striking muscle.

His assistants pulled the opening wide with hooks, and each man was soon standing on top of the quivering body, their bare feet slick. Suddenly, the whole ship lurched. One assistant fell off, the other dug his knee under the chin of the body, and Hephaestion drove his left calf deep into the man’s guts.

Was that another one? the man on the floor asked, sliding about as he tried to climb the table again.

Most likely, Hephaestion answered through his teeth, correcting his grip on his knife. Sometimes the new damned just boil up in big pockets from below.

Seems to be happening a lot more than expected.

War.... Hephaestion continued vacantly, continuing his gutting. He was now reaching in under the sternum to slice loose the lungs. War back on Earth, in Europe, like no war ever seen before—tens of thousands dead every day. They call it the Great War.

Fucking idiots....

The three men fell silent as they sliced and severed and scooped the glutton clean, and after many hours’ work, his entire midsection consisted of empty skin, a spinal column, and the limp red fist of muscle that was the heart dangling from its arteries.

After dousing themselves clean with buckets of salty water, the two assistants slid their tunics back on and got their cord and needles ready. Each needle was the length of a finger and thick enough to puncture a cured animal hide.

Ulfric wandered in and leaned against the near wall.

Hephaestion was still angry, and tried to ignore him, but there was no avoiding Ulfric’s presence. When Ulfric wanted a person’s eye contact, he got it.

Give us a few minutes, if you two would? Ulfric asked of the men, who at any rate were grateful to stretch their legs and be away from their gory work for a bit. Soon, only Ulfric and Hephaestion remained.

Instead of waiting for Ulfric to speak again, Hephaestion dove in. I’m insane, he confessed.

Lord Almighty, you are. Ulfric smirked.

Trying to reason with me on this is a waste of time, especially now, as we’re in the sea with the body right on this table. I’m going down there and I’m getting Alex.

I know. A part of me hoped we wouldn’t find anyone fat and tall enough.

You underestimate how delinquent people can be with themselves.

I hate it when you judge people, Hepher.

"You hate it when I judge people more harshly than you do."

"Which is always."

The two men stared at each other silently, the remaining fat on the glutton gently rolling to and fro with the ship.

I’ve got your kit ready to go outside the door, here, Ulfric offered. But I know I’ll hate myself, and always wonder, if I don’t make one last plea for you not to do this. Alexander lived a life according to how he wanted, and he is in Hell for it. You followed him and loved him and served him, and somehow that merely got you Purgatory.

Not all of us just wake up in Heaven, Ulf.

Yet I choose to hang out in Purgatory helping people like you ascend, because... well, you know my thoughts on Heaven. Ulfric made it regularly clear to anyone within earshot how boring Heaven was. But if you go down there, and some devils or monstrous people get a hold of you, they might gnaw on you for all eternity. They’ll pluck your heart out, stick it in a jar, and you’ll never regenerate. You won’t think, or remember anything, and only know suffering and imprisonment. Hell, you might get charred into ash and sprinkled to the wind. Maybe something will eat you and shit you out. How long would it take to regenerate from that kind of thing?

"That’s why I’m going as prepared as possible, and I’ve trained—we’ve trained—for this for decades."

You might not come back, Hepher.

I know.

You’re one of the ones worth saving and working with, to get upstairs.

And I appreciate that. I truly, truly do.

Suddenly a shift in Ulfric’s voice filled the cabin with anger. I wouldn’t have done any of this for Alexander the Great.

Hephaestion couldn’t meet his friend’s eyes, but he felt them burning on him.

But.... Ulfric’s voice eased. I’d do it for Hephaestion the Good. I’ll miss you. The man crossed the room in a blink and smothered Hephaestion in another hug.

I’ll miss you, too, but you’ll come and rescue me if Lucifer gets me.

Ulfric’s body jerked with a snicker. Jackass! He banged on the wall to summon the two men back from outside, then returned to his spot against the wall and let everyone work.

Naked except for leather greaves, Hephaestion strapped the two separate halves of his hoplon shield to his back, a compact and collapsible design from Ulfric. In the center of the shield was the simple design of a heart—he felt it fitting that when the shield was whole, the heart was also whole.

Next came the three parts of Hephaestion’s dory spear. Each spear segment would screw in to the next, turning three two-foot sections into a six-foot-tall thrusting weapon.

Hephaestion curled into a face-down fetal ball, head in the glutton’s pelvis, and placed the spear portions between his knees along his host’s spine. While gruesome, he maintained his perspective by recalling that he’d done many horrible things to many horrible people, and this was not a singular occurrence. This body provided a means to an end, and through it he would reach his first goal.

Elbows and knees in tight, he took deep gasping breaths, knowing that it would be the last time he would taste air for a possible eternity.

I’m ready! Sew me up!

The assistants went about their work.

Remember, Hepher, Ulfric said. "If you do get through, and get your man, you head downward. Just keep going until everything is frozen, farthest from the light of Heaven. Find the Devil’s Spine. Get through there, be worthy, and once out, you’ll see the first two stars man ever saw. Look for those stars."

Hephaestion nodded as best he could. Soon the loose skin lay over him, slapping against his bare, arched back. The men stitched furiously and swore, but sound became more muffled to Hephaestion’s ears.

The work was done. The glutton would regenerate, but with Hephaestion in the way his lungs and intestines would grow back malformed and entangling, creating a terrible mess.

To Hephaestion’s benefit, however, was the simple fact that without air, he would drift into a death-like dream state. It wasn’t uncommon that when a soul wanted to recede into oblivion, they would hang themselves from a tree in Purgatory, a chiseled stone often nearby asking passersby not to cut them down. Hephaestion hoped it would be a place where he could dream, adrift inside a warm body in an ocean of wretches.

He heard muffled grunts and shouts, and felt the body being tugged at and rolled about by rope and pulley. He ran his fingers along the wooden shafts of his dory, imagining how glorious it would feel to drive its piercing edge into the heart of whatever beast tormented Alexander. There was no power greater in Earth’s history than a Greek and his spear.

The ropes twanged and the pulley’s arm creaked.

After so many centuries pining, and so many decades planning, it all came down to this moment. What if the seams tore? What if Minos detected something was amiss while judging the glutton? What if the man he hid within had committed greater crimes than gluttony, and was sent elsewhere? What if the man was a suicide? A suicide would circumvent Minos’s judgment altogether and be cast down into the forest to sprout into a red tree. If that happened, would Hephaestion spend an eternity encased in bleeding bark and moaning wood?

Yet he could not turn back, and calmed himself once again by thinking of Alexander’s laugh, his vibrant eyes, and his sandy-blond hair. He thought of them both riding Bucephalus together, as they led 35,000 Grecians marching across Achaemenidian fields of wild flowers, the huge horse sniffing at the blossoms casually, its powerful weight shifting between their knees.

Rocking back and forth as he was lowered down the side of the Bonny Sweetheart, Hephaestion tried to reach a peaceful state of mind.

The cries and screams and gargling coughs grew louder and louder.

Clawing fingers tugged at the glutton, and Hephaestion felt like a morsel being lowered to starved dogs.

Alexander’s laugh grew silent in the mayhem.

Gravity eased, and water began to seep in through the stitching. Howls and cries and lamentation rose all around him, and Hephaestion tried his best to close it out, but it filled him with terror. The battering eased as the water engulfed him, and soon everything was submerged.

He despised the sensation of drowning—a helpless kind of death. No matter how hard one tried to remain dignified while doing it, the soul’s body refused to go easily. Ulfric had run him through, bashed his head in, and sliced him up during their training sessions, to prepare him for this journey. With each death, his earthly life felt farther away.

Drowning was still the worst. No human in the afterlife truly needed food, air, or sleep, but very few conquered their need of any of them, and rarely did a person conquer all three. Food and sleep were relatively simple, but the lung’s desire for air was so primordially anchored in the soul, it was by far the most difficult to overcome.

He’d spent decades developing the discipline to suppress his need for air, but it was always a brutal challenge. With convulsions, the salty water ran into his nose and slithered down his throat into his burning lungs. He clutched his dory as tightly as possible, desperately trying to remember that a Grecian with his spear can and will shape the world.

That was his last cohesive thought before blacking out into suspended oblivion, awash in the sea of angry and terrified condemned.

Hephaestion dreamt—if that’s what it could be called during death—about the cruel and white-tipped swells of the Hydaspes, a river as far East as any Greek had ever ventured. Its rippling current had claimed wagons, carts, horses, livestock, and men.

All those centuries ago, tasked yet again to find a way across another